Moon Light Real

-I think it feels weird because the Night World books are so tightly focused on the main couples. There aren’t a lot of minor characters doing their own thing. It makes the Circle Daybreak army feel out of nowhere because we haven’t seen them getting organized in the background in the books. We never had any background characters also find their soulmates so we don’t know how common finding your soulmate is or how many people are even in Circle Daybreak. Circle Daybreak goes from a few couples in Thierry’s living room in Soulmate to owning safehouses in Witchlight to having an army and enclaves in multiple cities here.

-The Night World books also entirely happen in the USA. I don’t think we get any mention of how the night people manage in other countries. In the real world there are a lot of local variations on the vampire, and even more on what it means to be a witch. Are there werewolves in countries where there are no wolf-wolves? We don’t know. This story mentions other countries for the first time.

-Keller is so in love with Iliana lol. I wonder if LJ Smith watched Revolutionary Girl Utena, or read fics about Sailor Mars having feelings for Usagi. I wanna ask LJ Smith if she secretly shipped Keller/Galen/Iliana and just couldn’t write it in the story because 90s and now we can’t ask!

-Time bubbles, cryo-pods and a secret inverted tower where time runs slowly and there’s a big animal park... it so doesn’t fit the urban fantasy vibe the books all had.

-All rise for Lord Thierry. Nope nope nope, do not like. I don’t get that vibe from Theirry in Soulmate, where did it come from?

Now if it was more like “Thierry is a wise person and good leader because he’s so old and he’s a super impressive dude and he and Hannah take a parent role to all the mostly parentless teens in Circle Daybreak so people naturally get all servile around him but he shuts that down and reminds people that everyone is equal in Circle Daybreak” I’d be so extremely there for it.

-Sarah told them dragons lose horns with age? Sarah knows about dragons? How? Evidence for the Sarah-is-the-dragon-princess theory right there.

-So, twins. LJ Smith says somewhere, probably the fan guide, that she knew from the start that they were twins, and Rashel’s hunter name is The Cat so... maybe? But I can’t help thinking of the dragons appearing in book 9 of a 10-book series and just being a little dubious that Ms. Smith did that much planning ahead. I hate to doubt her word but girl, you put out the One From prophecy without knowing what the lines meant so I gotta press X here.

-But is it a good retcon? I kind of like shaking up the two girls’ lives by giving them sudden family members and letting Rashel learn to shapeshift. That’d be cool. And I do like the idea of their shapeshifter dad handling things badly, just because it’s realistic I guess. People handle stuff badly sometimes. And here’s a background soulmate couple! I wonder if their dad is still out there somewhere. But it is so dang retcony. I dunno, what do y’all think?

-These stories feel disconnected from the published Night world books because after Witchlight LJ Smith had years and years to just play around with her world and her characters and write and rewrite Strange Fate so these stories feel... both good and bad. They’re the product of love and dedication and development hell. They’re a glimpse into the alternate timeline where Ms. Smith’s career didn’t get derailed and she just kept writing and has twenty more series under her belt. That’s why we have the army and the white flower insignias and the superscience, all things that wouldn’t have been in Strange Fate 1999 but will be in Strange Fate maybe-2027.

THICKER THAN WATER

This story is about what happens to Keller and some of the other Night World characters during the night when the Apocalypse finally comes about. You don’t need to have read Strange Fate to understand it—which is a good thing since Strange Fate hasn’t been published yet. Rating: all ages, a little gory.

Part I

They're gone, and I'm left behind.

For the first time since I joined Circle Daybreak, I can't perform my duty. And my duty lately had been the most serious of my life-I'm last resort to Iliana Harman.

You don't understand some part of that? I don't mind explaining. It isn't as if I have anything else to do around here. Not now.

Iliana . . . well, I don't think there is an explanation for her. To look at her, as little as she is, and as fragile as she is-you certainly wouldn't think she'd be any good in a fight. But even if she looks like a Christmas angel ornament, she killed a dragon with her witchlight last year-a dragon in its true form-and saved my life.

Not that I'm anybody important. I'm Keller, one of Lord Thierry and Lady Hannah's foot soldiers. My first name? You really want to know that?

It's Raksha.

Oh, you like it?

It means "demon" and as Rudyard Kipling once said, it wasn't given to me as a compliment.

I hate it and never use it, myself, even if I have to admit it's most likely a good name for me. I'm guessing my mother gave it to me just before she dumped me in a parking lot as a baby. Stuck in my half-and-half form, I probably looked pretty damn demonic.

I'm a panther, by the way.

A shapeshifter, I should say. When I'm human I'm a girl with very long black hair and gray eyes, and I wear boots that go "click click" on the floor. That last is because I got sick and tired of hearing people scream when I turn up behind them. I can't help walking like a panther, and the only thing I hate more than screaming is bawling. I have sensitive hearing and-I'll admit it's a fault-I'm not very patient with cowards.

Which is why I didn't understand Iliana for so long. She's a crybaby and she screams if she sees a mouse. Even now, even knowing what she really is, sometimes I wonder if she should be in this business at all.

Circle Daybreak isn't for weaklings. It might be an organization to help humans get along better with the people of the Night World -the vampires and witches and shapeshifters and all the rest of our motley crew-but it's not exactly made up of model citizens, by definition. Half of us have a heritage that taught us that humans were prey to be eaten, and a lot of the other half have spent most of their lives trying to find and kill the evil demons. It's always been that way in the past, humans versus Night People. Parasites, they called us. Animals. Murderers.

Vermin, we called them. Pests. Meat.

Maybe Thierry and Hannah shouldn't have tried to change it. But they meant it for the best; and for some people Daybreak is their only choice: their last refuge. What does a vampire do when he finds out that his soulmate is a human girl-maybe a vampire hunter? What does a Circle Midnight witch do when she's bound by a silver cord to a human boy?

The Night World has a flat rule about this: the sentence is death for all of them. Well, at least you can say for them that they're not wishy-washy.

There isn't much tolerance built into human societies either, though: not for anyone as different as we Night People are. Where would I have ended up if there had been no Daybreakers to take me in? In what circus or sanitarium? I can just see the posters: "See the amazing Cat Girl! But don't try to pet her; those fangs and claws are real!"

You may be able to understand why I'm a little bitter.

Circle Daybreak shelters anyone who's willing to give up the prejudices of the cruel past. From the age of three it's sheltered me. In return, I've been more than glad to give all my loyalty to its vision. It's the least I can do, right?

But now everything is different. The cruel past? Right now it looks as if the future is going to be infinitely worse.

If the dreams that that odd girl, Sarah Strange, told us about are genuine prophecies... we're doomed to a future darker than anything except complete extinction. No! Extinction would be better, more merciful.

But I can't take that in right now. It's as though my mind were blocked to it. All I can think about is Iliana's violet eyes looking at me as she gave me half of herWitch Child pendant. She knew that she was going to have to go to do the fighting of her life, not against one dragon but against dozens-hundreds-who knows how

many.

And she knew that neither Galen or I would be going with her, even though we'd volunteered. Of course, if she'd had her choice about it, I'm sure she'd rather have had Galen. I think she's still in love with him, just a little bit. But she gave the pendant to me, because she knew I would need something when she was gone. And she knew what it was I would need, too. Something that would be a symbol of the tie between us, because the real ties were going to be cut.

That's the way she is, you see. All the ditzy behavior and pettishness and whining; all that goes away when somebody around her is hurt. It blows away, and what's left is the Wild Power, the blue firewielder, Mistress of Air, the Witch Child. And then she fixes the hurt, whatever it is. I don't mean she's a healer. I mean she cares so much about the people around her, and so little about herself, that somehow she fixes things. She's been doing it since she was a toddler. She would lay down her life for a stranger-any stranger. Naïve? Yes. Annoying? Definitely. But somehow I love her for it.

And now she's gone and I can't protect her any longer. I want to scream, to curse. Hardly part of my image, right? Good old Keller, never looses her cool.

I'm so hot I could scald anything I touch.

I found out that once she gave her brand new winter coat to some homeless person, and her mother was so mad that she wouldn't buy her a new one. So Iliana, who likes of all things to be in fashion, wore her old coat, a little too short in the sleeves, a little bit frayed, all winter long-and she wore it with a smile on her face. That was before Circle Daybreak found out who she was and took her away from her family, or should I say, took her whole family to live here, while she lay in cryogenic sleep most of the time, waiting.

Everybody loves her, of course. Even if they're too stupid to see all of her, all of what this miracle of a girl can be, they fall in love with the surface image: those violet eyes and the white-gold hair, and her childish prattling. I don't mind any of that. I have my own mate, my soulmate, and even if Galen is still a little bit in love with her, the silver cord doesn't lie, and we're happy together.

Galen is a leopard. But he's also Prince and Heir Apparent to all the shapeshifters in the world, and he's the most handsome and gentle prince that ever walked the earth, human or Nightworlder. I know I said I didn't like cowards, but if you think being gentle is the same thing-well, I feel sorry for you, and get out of my life. Please. Galen is braver than I am, and he'd be a last resort for Iliana if they'd let him. But princes don't live just for themselves. They live-and set examples and policy-for everybody they rule over.

So I am . . . I was... the last resort, the only last resort for that miracle child. I'll bet you don't even know what a last resort is.

I'll tell you.

Lowest down on the list, the ones with the lightest duties, are guardians. We have guardians here in Harmony, the town that Thierry and Hannah created after the millennium, when it turned out that all the prophecies had been wrong and the Apocalypse wasn't coming on schedule. I was eighteen then. I guess I'm getting on eighteen-and-a- half now. That's the way time goes in the Tower in Harmony, keeping everybody young and fresh in case the Apocalypse suddenly came after all.

And it did. It came with a vengeance and there wasn't a damn thing any of us could do about it....

But I was talking about guardians. Practically anybody can be a guardian. You just have to have a black belt in karate, similar qualifications in judo and kung fu or other martial arts; or the Powers of a vampire; or a witch commanding amber fire or higher, or be a shapeshifter who's proven by making enough kills that you can use lethal force to protect your "mark." Kiddy stuff.

Next comes bodyguard. A bodyguard has to have more skills, and has to be willing to take a silver bullet-or a pair of fangs-or a lethal spell for their mark. That's a bit above kiddy stuff. You have to be smart to be a bodyguard, because usually dying for your mark is not the optimal action. You're supposed to find a way to keep them alive. After that is escort. Again, you have to be smarter, faster, more skilled than a bodyguard. And you have to know etiquette, too, in case your mark has to go into formal situations, like a grand ball given by Lord Thierry for the Solstice or something like that. It takes not just strength, or skill, but grace to be an escort. And you still have to be ready to take the bullet, of course.

And then finally there's the last resort. Maybe you have some idea of what that is, now. It's the thing that saves the target when everything else has failed. The absolute, last, final option.

That's what I am. . . what I was. Last resort to Iliana. I was supposed to protect her when all the guardians and bodyguards and escorts went down. At the last possible second I was the one she was supposed to count on.

And now she's gone and everywhere I look I see computer screens with pictures of the destruction of Paris. I think Paris was the last city they destroyed. Maybe it was just the last picturesque one.

San Francisco was the first. They know there's a Circle Daybreak enclave there. The dragons, the Apocalypse have come at last. They're beating us hands down, destroying us city by city. Washington, D.C. went around the same time as Bethlehem and Tokyo.

Maybe I'm a little more in tune with it all now. I can feel something of the horror. And I can feel Galen holding me, holding me in one piece, because I can't remember the moment of her going without wanting to fly into a million shards.

I open my consciousness and his mind in turn unfolds like a landscape around me. We've been betrothed for six months of outside time ... countess months the way this time-bound town reckons it. We haven't aged, but I should have matured. Why can't I open my mind to him in the same way? Even this is almost too much. He is making a paradise out of the landscape for me, bringing up every thought or word of love between us to create another flower here, a crystal waterfall there, a moon at least three times as large as the real one to glaze everything with silver.

In the face of utter disaster, he's trying to raise my spirits.

He's frightened, not of the disaster, but for me.

I look up at him. He looks, as always, like a prince out of a children's story, with dark gold hair and green-gold eyes as intense and radiant as any cat's. No boy should be so beautiful.

And now that he sees me watching him his eyes change; their pupils enlarging hugely; a completely involuntary sign of helpless fascination, of love.

I pull him down and kiss him, enchanted by him as if I have as I have been so many times before. Galen wears his heart on the outside, but the inside is much more interesting. And it changed something inside me, when I met them both, to know that there was more than one being without an ounce of malice in their hearts.

I've kissed him too long, too well. I know what he wants now. But here is where

our opposite natures betray us.

I'm a panther. In times of stress-and what greater stress could there be-I need to be alone. To hunt, if possible. If not, simply to pace, to run . . . I need to feel the wind rushing past me. I need to push myself until I'm physically exhausted or I'll turn on all I hold dear and (figuratively, fortunately) snap their heads off.

And I need to do it all alone.

Normally it's easy for one or the other of us to bend. And if you think it's always he who gives in you're wrong. He is slowly, I think, and gently taming me. I've found that sometimes the need to be alone, and to exercise can be very sweetly turned into a need to hold him more tightly, and more tightly still until we are both exhausted. I don't mind this form of unhurried, tender taming. Sometimes I need to be reminded that I am more than an animal-and a job.

Sometimes Galen goes with me when I want to hunt. But we're true beasts in our shapeshifted forms and it's hard to stay together. I think he feels guilty afterward, too. Our lovely town of Harmony has a paradise attached to it. That's what they used to be called in ancient Persia. A carefully planned park with miles of room to run, stocked with white-tailed deer and other prey animals from around the world. It's not just for shapeshifters. The vampires need to eat, too-sometimes they need to kill, as I do.

Are you afraid of me yet? You should be. If not for the ample stock of prey nearby I might come wandering into your neighborhood. Other big cats have snapped and paced into quiet streets in the glittering dusk or the misty morning. Joggers are tempting fate. Dog-walkers provide appetizer and entrée. There are usually no consequences because there is nothing left-no body-no evidence-no habeas corpus.

Be glad that if I want I can take down a wildebeest, here, in Virginia, in this magically hidden kingdom that shelters even the most savage, as long as humans aren't on the menu.

Right now, Galen is . . . pressing his suit, to use an old metaphor. But this is one of the times I can't be tamed. I need to run. I need the open air.

"I'm sorry. I can't. Not now."

Face buried in my hair, he gives me his whole heart, as usual. "I'm afraid it will be the last time."

I am wondering what it feels like to force yourself to lie still when shaking with the need to flee when he releases me. His face is wet, but he smiles and his golden-green eyes are blazing.

"Go," he whispers, with one last caress, dragging his fingers through my hair all the way from scalp to waist. Part of me is screaming, stay with him, moron. But his gaze is steady. "I'm not afraid anymore. I believe in Iliana and the others."

I stare at him. Sometimes I think he is a mirade, too.

I want to believe the way he does. I don't want to be able to imagine Iliana facing a huge dragon-an adult, fully grown, with wings spread and black fire gathering in its open mouth. I don't want to be Keller.

This time I let him kiss me. Then I whisper with all the fierce tenderness of which I am capable, "I'll come back to you. I believe in Iliana, too. Wait for me." I'm a human being as well as a panther, so I can lie. I don't know what to believe. I don't see how she can succeed. But I won't betray her by putting it into words.

As for the rest, I know he'll wait. And that thought is sweet because it can be very good after waiting. And all the time I'm running alone I'll know that is waiting, in exquisite torment for me to come back to him.

I'm off the couch and then out the door at once.

There's only one elevator working and a crowd waiting to go up, to see their families. But I have priority because I work directly for Lord Thierry. I get into the elevator and feel the acceleration, glad to have something to strain against when I could be straining against Galen. Am I an idiot?

Damn it, I need the sky and the grass.

I may need the taste of blood.

And the elevator goes up, taking me through time zones in this bizarre underground Tower that is the heart of the town. I watch the sweeping second hand of my watch as it goes faster and faster. I am leaving behind the depths where time is slowed to the gait of a crippled, ancient tortoise at the end of Archimedes' bridge. I am headed for the town where time only flows as slow as molasses. By the moment the elevator doors spring open I have already adjusted my body to the change.

Nobody moves out of my way fast enough, so I use my elbows. And then my heels are going clickety click and I am out of the building and almost running through town. Only almost, though. I still have some dignity.

One problem with working in the underground Tower is the dress code. I can't wear shapeshifter hide jumpsuits all the time. A crisp white blouse, a pair of pressed trousers, and ankle boots-that's my usual garb. I can always change if I want to Change.

Except that this time I forgot.

Oh, well. I reach the paradise and quickly go through the procedures to get in. The keepers all know me. Once inside I find a handy tree, crooked and individual enough to remember, and I strip, putting all my clothes in a neat pile with my ankle boots on top. I don't think anyone who sees those boots will mess with my clothing, no matter how enraptured they are in their animal form. I've done this before, seen werewolves sniff at the pile and run.

Before I shift my shape I take another look at the tree, a good common oak. That willow wand girl, Sarah, affected my senses much as it does. They said she was almost a dryad, the vampires and seers and Old Souls who can feel such things. To me, she felt like a mouse-but a mouse that was trying to be brave so desperately it had an undertone of lioness.

And what had she said? That she believed you could get energy from a tree by laying hands on it and give energy by embracing it.

Right now I am steaming with energy. I don't want to kill if I can possibly help it. Naked, I embrace the rough trunk, lay my cheek against a bole, and try to channel my energy out through my arms. I am perfectly still except my grappling with this wood. And then I feel it, a release of energy into the bark and through it, causing sap to race, and a simultaneous shock like lightning from my palms to the soles of my bare feet, resting on the trees knobby roots.

It feels... wonderful.

Now I need to shift.

All I need to do is to let go. There's no thinking involved. It's just like pulling one end of a bow-tied ribbon. I pull, once, hard, and my body springs free.

As always I force myself not to try to make the moment in between last longer. It's a moment when my whole body is free; weightless as a candle flame, shapeless as a gust of wind, except that today it's more like a forest fire or a tornado. For just a second I feel total release and then I am subject to gravity again and everything is changing. A glossy coat sprouts and covers my nakedness, a tail sprouts and gives me something to lash. My bones and muscles shift and I feel an exquisite frisson as my whiskers fly free. I fall forward and land, crouched on four delicate but heavy feet.

My whole world changes.

I see heat; I feel every object in the park with my entire body. I hear the noise of some small rodent digging frenetically just five feet behind me. I hear the wind. I look up and see the sky in different colors, none of them blue.

I can feel the low growl in my throat-a continuous rumbling sound.

I'm purring.

The wind is chasing clouds through a sky that has no end. And the wind brings the scent of three white tailed deer in the trees just east of me.

I crouch and leap and come down running.

And then there are no words. There are only sensations as I run and run, faster and faster, drawing energy from my terror, from my grief, from my love.

I don't expect anyone to understand that: that I express my love by running away. But I'm a panther. You'd understand and be damned grateful if I expressed any feeling by running away from you.

I won't try to pretend, though. Mostly I'm running because I need to run, on a raw physical level. It's bliss.

Once again I feel almost weightless as powerful muscles propel me forward faster, faster, faster. My adrenaline is so high that it feels absolutely effortless. Each leap powers me into the next leap. It's like running on the Moon except for the speed. Trees fly by, the deer fly by, running from a predator that couldn't care less about them for the moment. The fence is directly in front of me; I've already run the full length of the paradise. I'm tempted to leap it; in this state I know I can do it. Instead I sheer off at the last minute, running beside the fence, racing it.

I run until I do feel the effort. Panthers are sprinters, not marathon runners. But I push myself and keep going. I can feel my heart pumping, sending blood into necessary muscles. The muscles begin to tire, to rebel. I won't let myself slow. This is what I've been waiting for.

I... can't keep up this pace.

But I do.

My heart pumps harder, harder still; my traitor breath whistles. My muscles try to knot, but I keep them stretched, keep them supple, not allowing a moment's slowing. A hundred more yards. And a hundred more. And a hundred more.

And finally I blossom for myself, almost as I would have blossomed for Galen had I stayed back at the tower.

Second wind.

That's what they call it, and right now, with my beloved Mistress of Wind gone, I don't find the name as pedantic as I usually would. I am a second wind in this forest right now. As the endorphins finally flood my body I decide that I will not kill today. I've run the entire length of the fence anyway; I've circumnavigated the park and set every other living being inside it fleeing.

With my blood singing and my body exhausted I've achieved what I set out to. My brain, at last, doused in the endorphins and the weariness, lets go of the feeling that I'm going to start screaming and not ever be able to stop.

I let myself slow.

Now to go back to Galen. He deserves anything I have left.

My senses are sluggish, my sight dim. I almost run into the young man before I smell him.

I stop. Usually now it's a matter of tiptoeing delicately away with my tail between my legs, trying to look harmless and convince the person I've encountered that I'm not going to bite their arm off.

But this one is different. He's lamia, I smell: a family vampire. He's let himself age to a (to humans) sophisticated and probably attractive twenty four or five. He's single, though, no intimate smell of a mate on him. But under the overwhelming park smell of trees there is a touch of Lord Thierry and Lady Hannah. And he's vaguely familiar smelling. Undertones of paper and computer scent-plus the calfskin leather of a briefcase-and, ugh, alligator skin shoes. And watch strap.

If I were human I could identify him more easily by aura, but in my animal form the only aura I pick up is "does/doesn't like cats." All cats have it and know exactly who to rub up against. You guess which we pick.

But I know this man now. He's an attaché to Lord Thierry, picked up the last time Thierry went to the Los Angeles Circle Daybreak enclave. His name I can't access, not in my current state, but his identity is clear. We've had several talks about improving satellite communication between enclaves.

He's hungry, too. He's here for feeding, for bloodletting, but I've scared all the critters away. He doesn't smell that upset.

He's clapping.

"Brava! It must be you, Keller. Only you would be training at a terrible time like this."

Why does he want to start this one-sided conversation with a lie? He knows it's me because vampires can smell almost as well as I can, and-this is the really obvious bit- I'm the only black panther here in the Harmony enclave. He smells of deceit.

I give a short snort, and leave him to interpret it. I turn away.

But he's crossed the distance between us and he is scratching behind my ears now. Under other circumstances, and with someone else, I might encourage that. After such a good run I might even let them pet my forehead and chin. That's as far as it goes with petting me, except for Galen. I'm a one-man panther, and he's a one-panther guy. Now, though, I don't have time for ear-scratching. I huff. He doesn't stop scratching.

I growl.

Nobody could fail to get that message. Unlike my purring, my growl starts deep and sweeps into a buzz saw sound that usually sets people running.

But he keeps scratching. Why does he smell so strongly? It's overloading my senses, dulling them even further to everything around me.

My whiskers flicker across his hand and jerk back in revulsion.

I instinctively don't like him.

"... when I saw you running round and round the park," he was saying. "You must be pretty tired, but you looked-magnificent. Glorious. You truly are a creature of the darkness. Everything in your way ran for cover. I have to say I almost ran away myself."

Another lie. Doesn't he know that even lamia smell different when they're trying to deceive? It takes a made vampire: one who's exchanged enough blood that they die and come back to confuse my nose. He's been running and sweating all right, but he's been running after me.

Idiot. Why?

"Keller, you're one of the few who can survive in the new world that's coming. I'd like to see you do that. Resume your human form and let's talk about it."

Like hell I'd resume a weaker form. But I'd come this way on purpose and I see something now that electrifies my senses and brings me out of the last of my endorphin haze and into the moment.

I've come back to the oak tree where I'd left my clothes in a neat pile. There is no neat pile now. There is no pile. There are shreds and tatters. Even my boots are ruined. And there are claw marks in the tree that I'd given energy to. The claw marks make almost vertical splits in the tree, far deeper than anything I could manage.

I take this in much faster than it takes to say it all. And then I look at Whitcombe, whose name I finally remember.

"Sorry about that," he chuckles, deep in his throat. "I had to find your insignia- such a tiny thing to swallow. I didn't want you calling anyone to interrupt us. And I don't think anyone will be coming, now. I don't smell anyone else, do you? At least no one else alive."

I have screwed up royally. Somewhere around here I can smell the keeper- dead. Not drained of blood, though. Dead of some massive injury. The sort a panther might be able to do-I can't be sure until I see him. My nose tries to find him while my brain races. It can't be a setup for murder because I'd hardly do that to my own clothes. Unless it's a really clever setup, taking that into account-assuming I'd ruin my clothes to divert suspicion.

Whitcomb's still chuckling, deep in his throat. And I am remembering what Sarah Strange had said about the future:

"The dragons let some vampires live. They run the Houses-the farms where they raise people for the dragons to eat. And the guards are mostly werewolves but there are a few other kinds of shapeshifters, too....

But this is no vampire. And no vampire could have split that tree like that. "Have you got an answer for me, little girl?" he asks, gutturally, and I wish that I had not just gone through a marathon. I channel energy to my back legs.

"Yes," I hear my idiot mouth say. "Let's see what you really look like, you

bastard."

So he shows me.

Despite my smartass mouth my first thought is impossible. Impossible because I know Whitcombe, and this is really him, not some dragon imitation of him. Impossible because we can't have been infiltrated this deeply, for this long. Impossible because this horror simply couldn't be happening.

I've stood up to a dragon before. Along with my trained team of agents and Iliana, a Wild Power and the Witch Child. And Galen. And now, much as I hate to drag Galen into this, somebody's going to need to have a try at this thing once I'm gone. It won't take him long to dispose of me, and then there is the whole town for him to go through. I pull on the silver cord, as hard as if I want to break it. I've never tried this before, only heard of it. Cheap, no frills long distance communication-I hope. I wouldn't have tried it for fun since that would have made a miracle-well, petty. And then I try to send a simple message, although I know I will never hear whether Galen got it or not.

Dragon, I think, knowing that that word will get through if anything can. In the paradise. And then, a little ashamed, I loved you.

It doesn't occur to me to say help. This isn't pride, I swear. It's just that I know I will be finished before help can arrive. It's a long way to the Tower.

And now in front of me like some recurrence of the nightmare when I'd faced the first dragon, is another one. Splitting Whitcombe's skin like a peach and rising out of it. More hideous than any dinosaur, and yet with dinosaur-like skin and a dinosaur's stance, it stands tall beside the ruined oak tree. Then it spreads its huge wings and the stars are blotted out and for a moment my heart goes sick and faint, just looking up at the sheer hellish size of it.

A trihorn. Wonderful. Since Sarah's helpful revelation that dragons lose their horns as they age rather than gaining them, I know that this beast is even more dangerous than the one I had faced before.

Do I wonder, for just an instant, whether I can run?

Yes.

Part II

The shame of admitting that is worse than fear. But, look, I may be a grunt, but I'm no idiot. It had made me an offer; for three beats of a hummingbird's wings I wonder if maybe it wants me enough that it won't destroy me and I can get out and come back with reinforcements.

But the second that the thought comes I throw it away. The dragon is laughing now, the deep bass laugh that I remember. The smell of it is overwhelming and I taste metal at the back of my throat. And I know I'm not going anywhere.

Well, figuratively I'm not. In real life the dragon's transformation has only taken a moment; my thoughts an instant longer. And now I am gathering my muscles under me, and now setting them free, and now I am racing up the oak tree, still sturdy enough to support me as I go straight up, and up, and up, and then I do a backwards somersault in the air and come down with claws out and jaws ready.

As I come down the dragon flinches away but I've already allowed for that in my calculations. I hit its hideous muzzle dead on and flip my body again because I know what I need to do.

Bite the horns off.

If it sounds impossible you don't know the strength of a panther's jaws. I can crush a wildebeest's spine with one snap. This won't be so easy, but like a bulldog I am known for my ability to hold on.

The dragon makes a guttural sound but doesn't scream. Its goal is the opposite of mine: it doesn't want to attract attention. I bite down hard, tasting its poisonous black blood, feeling cartilage and muscle crunch. And then I simply keep up the pressure, clamping my jaws tighter and tighter, hearing the wonderful sound of more things snapping and tearing as I shake my head violently without ever letting up on the strength of my bite.

The dragon scrabbles at me ineffectually with its relatively puny upper arms. It has claws too, and I feel thin streaks of pain down my back as it rips flesh. Nothing to worry about.

This is the last time I will think that particular phrase.

The reason I need to bite the horns off is that this is the seat of the dragon's power. I am down to something steel-hard at the center of one horn when the dragon lets rip with that power-right down my throat.

Black fire. Generated in this vibrating horn to be channeled wherever necessary. Now lashing into me, burning my jaws, my throat, my internal organs. I can feel it crackle like lightning, making my fur stand on end all over my body.

Agony. Paralyzed, my body tries to fall off the dragon's face, into a cavernous mouth. But my jaws won't let go.

Enraged, the dragon tosses its head. I go flying, describe an arc in the air, and smash into the ground . . . hard.

I feel ribs break. In my mouth is the outer covering of the dragon's horn, an unimportant trophy that I spit out since the inner horn is still intact, smooth and hard and shining like ebony in the moonlight. I can see it as I feel the ground shake. The dragon is stepping toward me.

I give a panther's scream of pain and rage. Time to try again.

I drag my bruised body to its feet.

The beast in me wants to try the exact same method of attack. The human knows I have to get inventive.

My fear has been conquered. This is something the beast understands, even enjoys. A fight to the death. But again, the human interferes, and I still have plenty of room for terror for my... my loved ones, I guess you would call them.

This bastard is going to take a lot of killing.

In my mind's eye I see them all standing, all in danger. Galen first, of course. But Winfrith and Nissa-my longtime teammates, too. Lady Hannah. To know her is to pledge your life to her. No, she's gone, but Thierry, my liege lord is here. And Aradia, the blind seer, and oh my gods-Iliana's family.

They are all there in the town, her family. Her little brother, still a baby, still calling me "Kee-kee" for kitty. He is asleep now, safe in his bed. Either I get better, smarter, more deadly-and fast-or safe is the last thing he'll be.

From somewhere I find more speed. I race around the dragon, ignoring the charred feeling in my gut and the grinding of bone against bone in my chest. I start to leap over the huge tail, not mobile enough to lash like mine, and then I get an idea.

I turn at the last second and climb the dragon.

Just like a tree, up the tail and up the spine and up the head, while the creature tries to buck me off but Kee-kee has the two-inch-long claws of a were-panther, and I'm not going anywhere except over the flattened dome of skull and straight to the same horn I attacked before.

This time my jaws need to be stronger. They will be, I promise myself as I fly at the naked horn.

They are. I open them wide for the greatest striking power and then bite down as if I wished to drive my own fangs through the opposite sides of my mouth.

Big crunch and I feel the horn break in two. I swallow some black fire before the thing comes completely free, but then it's loose in my mouth and the fire has no power to harm me.

Not from that horn at least.

I know what will come next and it happens. The dragon tosses its head, trying to throw me off again. But just before the snap comes that should send me sailing off, I chomp on the next horn. My body whiplashes in the air, and I feel something else inside me tear just as the black fire comes roaring down my throat again.

And then it's just a long nightmare of burning and hurting and channeling all my power to my jaws, which are somehow still hanging on as my body flaps like a flag in a brisk wind. The monster is clawing me, taking strips off my already flayed back. And the black fire is... indescribable. But at last, somehow in the nightmare I hear the crack that means I've severed horn number two.

Something gives way inside me then and I let myself be thrown off, to land this time in the jabbing, tearing branches of a tree before dropping like a stone. I wind up landing feet first, but off balance and it sends a hot shock up one leg that means I have broken bones there, too.

I don't have time to black out, yet it seems there is a little skip in the action. Now the dragon is looming over me, its black blood pattering around me like rain.

Its mouth opens, undoubtedly to finish roasting me alive. I know what I have to do- evade, find a tree, and leap to the attack... but my body is... sluggish. It doesn't seem to be obeying my commands.

In something like a dream, I fumble for the silver cord again. Come speedily, I send down it-haven't I done this before? But use all caution. The beast is deadly.

And, miraculously, I hear an answer.

We're here! the response comes-in a telepathic voice that I don't recognize-for the Goddess's sake, lie still. Don't move.

And then, in a kind of fever dream, I see the impossible. I see myself, in human form, launch upward off a ninja staff and toss a dozen shuriken-those deadly metal ninja stars-into one of the dragon's eyes.

My eyesight is understandably blurry at this point, but still, if I weren't sure I was crouched down here, I would swear I was up there. It isn't just the hair and clothing-I see my face in full moonlight. I see myself land lightly and sprint away, long black hair flying, crisp white shirt reflecting silver. The dragon, pawing at its face, turns toward my other self with a whining sound.

Now, Keller! Run away and then come back!

Somebody knows me inside and out. If they had just said "run away" I never would have moved at all.

And now there is another figure, compact and male, who does not use artificial weapons, but like me, his teeth and claws. He tears into the dragon's horn with his teeth and plunges his claws into the dragon's other eye, at the same time jolting it with kicks to the tender insides of its nostrils.

The dragon screams.

I have leaped, or rather launched myself and borne the impact somehow, into the shadow of another tree. The dragon is blind now, or almost. I gather myself for another horn.

Can you hear me? I call.

Yes. Are you well enough to attack? Go around back and we'll distract it.

It's a male voice-the vampire. But before we can put our plan into action, the beast changes tactics. It seems it no longer cares for secrecy. And it shows how little we understand these creatures.

With a roar that hurts my cat-ears, it turns and belches forth a huge stream of black fire from its mouth, swinging its head like a flamethrower, setting the paradise on fire.

Are you hurt? two telepathic voices ask me. I am too busy to say more than No! I am in place and ready for the final assault. I am going to climb the dragon again. I leap onto the tail and run up the backbone, forcing every step, because it knows me now, and it's trying to throw me off before I can get to the horn. Nothing on this earth could stop me, though, now that I've started. I sink my claws in deep, ignoring my wounds, ignoring my dizziness until at last I reach the summit of the head and open my jaws wide.

And then I hear what I've been waiting for.

Galen's voice. Wait, Keller! Wait for us! We're all here!

And the voice of Lord Thierry, who is a vampire, of course, ringing out over all the others in a tone not to be disobeyed: Let her draw last blood! She deserves the honor!

The very presence of them gives me new strength. I open my jaws to their widest and snap at the final horn as if I can win the war by severing it in one stroke. I can't do either, of course. And then there are more minutes of nightmare until I sense another cat running up behind me. The horn is hanging on by an iron thread now. I recognize the leopard as my soulmate and he leans against me, holding his body up with mine as with one last crunch the horn falls severed to the ground.

The dragon bellows, shattering the night with the sound.

The others close in then with guns and steel-tipped arrows and all manner of weapons. But they wait. They wait for Galen to snatch a naked young woman off the back of the beast and leap to the ground. I'm only barely aware of this part, or of the dragon's last scream.

I'm in the Tower infirmary. I've just opened my eyes to the most beautiful sight in the world: my soulmate's face. My soulmate's uninjured face, except for a long cut along one cheek. I wonder why they've left that unhealed.

I make a hoarse sound, but he is already bringing a cup of water with a straw to my lips.

How do you feel? he asks, in tones of desperation held barely in check. This close, the cord is very taut and we have no trouble speaking.

Like a dragon ran over me, I answer. Smartass that I am.

According to Quinn's report, you ran over the dragon even though you were obviously-badly injured, he says and I know that he is modifying to "badly injured" the words "almost dead." I'm amazed to be alive myself.

Were there any other dragons? I ask. How badly were we compromised?

A few others, he admits. I don't see how it could have happened. Some of the- people-had been in Circle Daybreak for years. He adds because he knows me, and knows what I must be wondering, There's nothing new about Iliana and the others.

So we're still in the same situation.

Yes. But for now, he looks me up and down with something like anguished joy in his eyes, at least we can say we're alive. The healers worked on you for twelve hours straight, you know. They took it in shifts. Even Winfrith insisted in helping with her witchfire. They're saying, only Keller. Of everyone still here, only Keller would take on a three- horned dragon alone.

"Well," I croak, just to see how badly my voice is damaged, "only- Keller would be a charred or squashed piece of bloody flesh if Quinn and Rashel hadn't turned up when they did."

Galen doesn't get defensive. Instead he looks, smiling, beyond my right shoulder. I turn painfully in bed-this bad after twelve hours of healing work, eh? and see myself lying in an identical bed. John Quinn, his hands heavily bandaged, is sitting beside it.

Except that it's not me, of course. It's Rashel Jordan, Quinn's soulmate. This close I can see all the little differences that make us unique. I have gray eyes, she has green. My chin is a bit more triangular. Her hair is a little straighter and she tends to wear it back, held by a ninja band around her forehead. Still, I'm fascinated by all the little things that are the same. It's like looking into a slightly distorted mirror. Why have I never realized how much alike we are?

And of course, there is the insurmountable difference: I am of the Night World, a shapeshifter, a panther. I come from the darkness. She is from the Day World, a human, even if a human with extraordinary athletic skills.

The guys are looking smug. I'm not sure why, but I ignore it for the moment. "Hey," I say to Rashel Jordan.

"Hi," she says, smiling a little.

"You were the first one to hear me?"

"Yes." She looks down. Although I've never seen her look anything but competent around the Tower, right now she seems to feel awkward.

"Then she told me," Quinn cuts in smoothly, "and she was just wild about it. She wouldn't stay and wait for help; she was frantic. So we headed for the park together. I guess we heard you because were just walking around town-Rashel didn't feel like sitting still."

She didn't, eh? Chalk up another likeness. But she, sensible girl, had taken her soulmate with her, and they obviously made a deadly hunting pair.

"Thank you for coming," I say as formally as possible, when I'm lying flat on my back, and looking, I'm sure, like I've been pulled through a rat's ass. "Both of you were great."

"Oh, we were, were we?" Quinn says softly, watching me with his black-on-black eyes. "Well, you were looking pretty good yourself. Like a housecat attached to an elephant, maybe. And refusing to let go."

I nod in thanks. I don't blush. I'm curious to see the two of them together now that we're not fighting.

Everyone knows their story. Rashel became a vampire hunter at the age of five or six when good old Hunter Redfern-he was alive back then-killed her mother and her kiddy friend. She was one of the very best, hating all "parasites"... until she met Quinn. Then the soulmate principle worked its magic and she ended up falling in love with him, but that never stopped her from trying to kill him, too, until he'd promised to give up human blood and join Circle Daybreak with her.

And John Quinn had once, five hundred years ago, been Hunter Redfern's heir. He had a long and an evil reputation, but he was here to wipe it out, and I didn't see anything particularly evil about him. He wasn't big but he was incredibly fast and skilled. I am glad that he had just happened... somehow... to pick up my warning cry.

But he hadn't, had he? It just didn't make any sense. Quinn was the vampire. Rashel wasn't even a lost witch. How could she have picked me up first? Before Galen had?

"Anyway," I say, "may we hunt together soon." I struggle a little to get my right arm from under the sheets-it feels as if the shoulder has been dislocated-and hold my hand out to Rashel.

She takes it in a firm grip, realizes how weak I am, and gentles the hold. She squeezes. I squeeze back.

"May I just get a little background information from you two, which you couldn't give while you were both unconscious?" Galen says in his most formal, most princely manner. Quinn smiles-wickedly. I wonder what game they are playing. All my background information is in the Tower computers, and all Rashel's, too. And there is very little about me that Galen doesn't know by heart.

"What is your date of birth?" He looks at me first. Now I really wonder if he's gone nuts. He knows I don't know that and that I don't like to have to admit it.

I refuse to flush. "I don't know when it was, but probably in the middle of December, eighteen and a half years ago."

He turns to Rashel. "And yours?"

"December 11," she says slowly.

"Which makes you eighteen and a half, too."

"Well-yes."

Galen turns back to me, his voice gentling. "And you were raised by foster parents from the age of three because someone-you presume your mother-left you in a cardboard box stuck in your half panther, half human form."

I feel the urge to go into my full panther form. He knows I don't like talking about this under strangers.

Please, love. Just trust me, he thinks. His eyes are dark because their pupils are so wide. He's begging me.

I melt.

But I can't let these strangers see that. I take a deep breath, tear my eyes from his and nod.

"And you-" Galen says to Rashel.

"Whoa," she says, letting go of my hand to hold her own up in a "stop" gesture. "All anybody needs to know is that I was raised by my mother, and I lost her in kindergarten. "I'm sorry," Galen looks truly chastened, but he persists anyway. That's how my soulmate gets places most people only dream of. "I was just going to ask you, though, about your father. Do you know anything about him?"

"He was a Marine. He was killed before my mother and I don't really remember much of him."

"Rashel," Quinn says, in a voice I've never heard him use before. So tender. Barely audible.

Rashel Jordan looks at him, and I look at him, and I see him looking at her in a way I've never seen him look before. A way I wouldn't have thought him capable of looking. I have no idea of what their unspoken conversation might be, but I think she melts.

What I know is that she says in a quiet voice, "That's what I always thought, anyway. But when Quinn and I moved to Circle Daybreak I brought along a picture of my parents in a ceramic frame. Wouldn't you know, it got smashed. And inside I found a letter from my father to my mother. It seems he didn't die after all; he just left her."

"I've got the letter," Quinn pats his pocket and I can see that Rashel is shocked. "I went down and got it while you two were being healed. Can I read a bit of it to Galen and Keller?"

Rashel is looking at him wonderingly. Then she nods, with a little shrug. I can see her bracing herself to hear it, and bracing herself to see Quinn, normally so dexterous, fumble in his jacket pocket. Those bandages make him clumsy. At last he gets the letter out.

It's on distinctive paper ....

I swear, and then fall silent, thinking.

Quinn reads: "Melisande,

You've put up with me and with them as well as any wife and mother could. But I know how you feel-even about me. I just don't know how to show you that it isn't true. I want to prove I could never hurt you-and yet I know I don't have the control I did before went overseas. I know the fits are coming on me more and more often. I know the child frightens you. What can I do, darling, except take her away? Then you'll be an ordinary widow with an ordinary child. And I'll go back to my own people-if they'll have me, with our darling little misfit. At least I'll go until I can stand before you-always-as a man."

"It goes on," Quinn says in his soft, dark voice. "But I don't think you need to hear any more. It's clear that it was written by a very troubled man-or was he a man? What if it was written by a very troubled shapeshifter? 'I want to stand before you as a man' can have two meanings. Rashel always assumed that it had something to do with his disappearing and being dishonorably discharged by the Marines. But what if you simply take it literally? He wants to be able to stay human all the time and never give in to the urge to change... to hunt? And what about the child, the 'darling little misfit?""

"That paper," I say. I've been forcing myself not to interrupt. "Please, may I see it?" I say paper instead of letter because it's the paper itself I'm interested in. It's light blue and very stiff, almost glossy.

But when I see the handwriting my heart almost stops in my chest. It's familiar. Very familiar.

When I was dumped in the parking lot I had a torn scrap of paper with me, inscribed with my first name, Raksha, and these cheery sentiments:

People die ...

Beauty fades..

Love changes.

And you will always be alone.

...all on a scrap of stiff blue paper, later worn almost to the texture of cloth. I had always assumed that it was my mother who had abandoned me, my shapeshifter mother who was disgusted that I, a full shapeshifter, couldn't hold one form or the other, but was stuck as a human toddler with panther ears and eyes and tail.

Now it seemed that every one of those assumptions was wrong.

I try to explain all this to Rashel without babbling. All right. I probably babble. Quinn looks at me in silent amusement; he's never seen me so animated, I'm sure. But it all seems so clear to me now.

"What if it was one of those early pairings? A couple that found they were soulmates, or just fell in love, and got married. The husband was a panther shapeshifter; the wife was human. They thought that love would conquer all, and that they could live together, and they had children-twins. Fraternal but still almost exactly alike. One twin was human but with almost superhuman reflexes. The other kid was a mess. Maybe even born in the half-and-half shape. Neighbors stare at the deformed child with pity and disgust-how can the mother take that? And the father-he doesn't sound like a very stable character to me to start with. He's denying himself the outlet of shifting-ever-and that alone can drive shapeshifters crazy."

I can see tears welling up in Rashel's eyes. "My mother-when we would go to the zoo I would always want to see the lions and the tigers and the other big cats. And she would never take me or Timmy there. Timmy was my friend that . . ." She shakes her head hard. "Anyway, she would never take me to see them. She would buy me an extra big ice cream cone and popcorn and we would go to see the monkeys or the giraffes."

We are almost talking over each other by now. "But my father-think how bitter and sick he must have been to leave me that scrap of paper. Not to mention leaving me. I guess he just couldn't cope with a demon-baby."

"I think maybe they both did the best that they could," Galen puts in quietly. He looks almost like Iliana when he says it.

Quinn gives a cynical snort.

And somewhere, in between the two them, I think, is the truth.

Rashel says wonderingly, "I used to mark my vampire victims with a mark like cat's claws. That was my name, too, in the vampire hunter gangs I ran around with. 'Rashel the Cat.' I used to like to hear that Night People were afraid of the Cat. I don't remember where I got the name. It just seemed. . . suitable."

I say fretfully, "I wish I still had my piece of paper. I was going to burn it, but it disappeared on its own. And now there's no way to be sure, and there never will be." "Oh, surely that's not true," Quinn says. "A simple blood test-we can even check your insignia."

"My insignia," I say haughtily, "is currently inside a dragon."

Looking a little sheepish, Galen feels in his pocket.

He looks even more shamefaced as he holds out a much-folded scrap of light blue paper. "I took it before you could burn it," he admits, catching my eye apologetically. I thought someday it might give us a clue about where you came from.

I look at him steadily, and with gratitude. "And you were right." Thank you, Galen, think. Thank you for everything.

He flushes beautifully-and something occurs to me.

If he were still a little bit in love with Iliana wouldn't I have seen it? Wouldn't there be a closed door in his consciousness, something I couldn't see behind, a place I couldn't go?

But there never is.

He always just throws himself open completely.

There are many locked doors in my own consciousness-places even I don't want to see. But I resolve that next time-and I already promised him that there would be a next time-I will be more open.

"They're the same! They're identical!" Rashel is saying wonderingly, comparing the two pieces of paper in her hands. Of course they are. I smelled that and saw it as soon as Galen took my scrap out. Oh, they've been different places, and one is much more battered and handled, but the stock and the weave and the ink are, as Rashel says, identical.

"Then it really means," she raises her green eyes to mine almost shyly, "that I have shapeshifter blood in me. Panther blood."

"If it's anything to brag about," I say. "You can brag on it."

"And it really means," Rashel adds softly, "That we're sisters. Twin sisters."

I am surprised at the twinge I feel on hearing that.

I have a sister. A twin. My parents may be gone, but this girl in the other bed lay curled tight beside me for nine months in the womb. That's awfully close.

I wish I had known before the Apocalypse. I want Iliana to know Rashel as my sister. I want to know her myself, that way.

The pain of missing Iliana and not being able to protect her doesn't just go away because of this. But the closeness that I already feel for Rashel is balm to my heart.

"Do you think," Rashel is saying, "that it's really impossible for me to shapeshift? If I have the blood, do you think I could try to learn?"

She means will I try to teach her. Of course I will. I owe her my life, for one thing. She smiles, a radiant smile that makes me involuntarily touch my own lips. "Look, there are three things to be happy about," she says.

"There are?" I say.

"Yes. First of all we killed a dragon, and we're not even Wild Powers with the blue fire. I think that's a good sign. Second, we found out that we were sisters. And, third, we're still here."

She's right. We're still here in Harmony, compromised or not. Right here, right now, we're still alive.

That is a good thing, I think and look at Galen.

He must have gone through hell while the healers were working on me for twelve hours. I think I was just a bag of panther skin with broken bones and charred organs floating around inside.

Please don't talk like that, he begs, and I'm surprised at how glad I am that the silver cord is working this way. It was terrible, he goes on, but Rashel and John were good friends all that time. They wouldn't let a healer near them-sent anyone who had a drop of power left in to see to you.

John? I've never heard anyone call Quinn by his first name. Only Galen, I think. Only he can get past the thorniest, thickest armor to see what's underneath. More than just a little like Iliana, I think.

He catches the thought and flushes more deeply still.

And then a voice just outside the door says, "All rise! All rise for Lord Thierry!"

I look up to see a very young herald, who is looking from me to Rashel-to my sister-flat on our backs in bed and covered in bandages. The guys are already on their feet and both of them are poised to jump if either of us should be stupid enough to try to move.

It's horribly undignified, though. I've never appeared before my liege lord like this, and I'd like to sit up at least.

A certain Quinn-ness has appeared in my soulmate's eyes, though. He locks gazes with me, wordlessly assuring me that he'll raise holy hell if I even ask to be propped up with another pillow.

I feel my gaze slide away. Maybe there are such things as lion tamers who use only their eyes to control their beasts. And maybe my sister and I haven't chosen such different mates, after all.

Instead I look at the young herald, who is looking as if she wished she were dead, and I hear behind her the doctor's opinion of asking either of us, and especially me, to twitch a finger.

Lord Thierry settles it by saying gently, "Let's just dispense with the formality, shall we?" He comes in, looking as gorgeous as ever with his moonlight colored hair pulled back into a ponytail and his dark, fathomless eyes taking in everything at once. He makes a slight bow to Galen, who merits this as prince of the shapeshifters, and then he makes a slight, eloquent gesture that clearly says, let's all sit down and talk like friends. When you're that many thousands of years old you learn to say a lot with a little movement.

He smiles and draws up his own chair. The herald hurries outside, stiff with horror. There is something very sad about that smile that I recognize. It's not quite his smile from the days before he found Lady Hannah, but almost. Of course, I think. She's gone with Iliana, too. And he should know if anyone does that they're not coming back. I have a realization that sends me flying bolt upright, bandaged hands scrabbling at my neck. Galen grabs for me, voicelessly crying out,

No, love, don't! At the same time Quinn makes a sound of surprise and concern, and my sister says, "Kel-I mean Raksh-I mean, Keller!"

"Here," Thierry says, still gently, because everything he does is gentle, but getting up hastily. "This is what you're looking for."

He puts into my bandaged hand Iliana's flower necklace.

I slump back, my muscles screaming, my eyes shut until I can make the tears go away. But they're tears of happiness. I hadn't taken the necklace off when I stripped because I knew it would still fit me in my panther form, and because-well, because I planned to never take it off. But after that fight...

"My lord!" I say. "You must have searched the entire paradise. How many people.. . "I can't say any more. I'm on the verge of bursting into tears like a baby.

"They were all volunteers," he says, and smiles. "They were very happy to do it for the hero of the day. The other two dragons took mobs of witches, I might add-and AK- 47s. In the future-if there is any future-people will talk about today as the day that Keller killed a dragon."

I don't dare open my mouth to say a word. I might have mentioned before, I hate bawling. Especially if the person doing it is me.

Instead I look over at Rashel and Quinn, and then up at Galen, pleadingly.

He'd risen when Thierry got up, and now he makes a full bow to him, which he does very well, incidentally.

"We're honored and grateful beyond our ability to express," he says, expressing it perfectly. I relax a little, trusting him. "And, of course, it must be a day for John and Rashel, too..."

I definitely see Thierry's eyebrow quirk at the "John." I glance sideways at Quinn who is looking at my soulmate as if he wants to strangle him.

How many times did I want to strangle you, Iliana? I think fondly about my

necklace's former owner.

"In any case," Thierry says, "I've come to thank you, formally and informally, for all the peoples' lives that you have saved. It won't be forgotten, as long as there is a Circle Daybreak left to remember it." He looks from Rashel, whose bandages still allow her to be recognizable and at me, wrapped from head to toe like a mummy.

"Not so much alike today," he says, and for a moment the sadness is almost gone from his smile. "But I'm sure you have a great deal to talk about, together."

Then he leans over and gently kisses me on the forehead.

How long has he known? Why didn't he say anything? My mind is racing as he turns and accords the same honor to my sister, under Quinn's watchful eye.

Maybe he wanted us to find out for ourselves.

Maybe he knew how much more it would mean to us that way.

I'll never know, I think as he turns to leave, pulling into his wake the doctor who wants to fuss over us again. The last words I hear from the doctor are, "I said you could talk to them for just a few minutes..."

There is a definite sense of letdown after Thierry has disappeared. Because I insist, Galen slips the flower necklace around my neck, where it looks, I'm sure, ridiculous, and makes me feel... well, almost as if Iliana were near.

I stare at the ceiling, thinking. I can feel Galen start to worry.

"It's interesting," says Quinn, who likes to make trouble. "We know you're twins, but we don't know which is the older sister."

"Oh, I am."

"I'm sure I am." The words come out simultaneously. We argue about it in a friendly, mock ferocious way. If my body wasn't still broken and healing we would be grappling in the same way kits do to establish dominance.

We're walking right on the edge now of despair and painfully gathered hope. At any moment dark wings may blot out the moonlight. But still something inside me is singing. I'm Keller and I'm a panther. Well, half a panther and half human.

I'm a twin, too.

Raksha and Rashel. Or Rashel and Raksha. I'm just a grunt after all, without any real claim to priority.

Those Who Favor Fire

This is, at last, the continuation of the story of Ash Redfern and Mary-Lynnette Carter. For those who haven't read the original, or don't remember, although they are soulmates, the stargazer Mary-Lynnette sent the vampire Ash packing when she heard about the sins of his past. Ever since, a reformed Ash has been trying to make amends. But will it ever be enough for Mary-Lynnette? And what's on the disk that Mary-Lynnette's friend claims will save humankind?

Rating: PG for mild violence. For romantics.

Some say the world will end in fire; Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. -Robert Frost

Ash

Ash Redfern, descendant of the great vampire Hunter Redfern, and currently enjoying the hospitality of the Circle Daybreak city of Harmony's war room on the day the world ended, was finding himself in an awkward position.

It wasn't the impending end of the world that worried him-exactly. Ash had lived a very interesting life and a full one, especially in terms of what he'd done to other people. Of course, he was reformed now. Lady Hannah had given him a white rose pendant at the last festival, which was extremely handy if he wanted to catch another Daybreaker off guard. But he was finding that he wanted to less and less. He was genuinely on the side of the Daybreakers, but more he was on the side of one particular human girl.

Mary-Lynnette. His Kate the Shrew who had somehow shrewdly tamed him, and without ever even breaking into a sweat over it. She'd simply picked him up, rummaged around in his exposed soul, and calmly said, "No, thank you," upon perceiving some of the things she'd found there. Then she'd kicked him in the shins a few times to make sure he didn't forget the incident.

But by then he had already been head over heels for her. The heavy hand of the Soulmate Principle had left him no choice, and he knew, despite her behavior, that his angel must be at least somewhat affected. Meanwhile, she had captured him, Ash the fox, who with a tip of the hat and a "Don't call me I'll call you," had escaped so many other maiden's tears and tantrums. Mary-Lynn hadn't cried at all. In fact, M'Lyn-his M'Lyn-hadn't seemed affected by his company one way or the other. It had taken bad old-fashioned work to even get her interested in speaking to him. It had even taken some old-fashioned cheating, which on the whole he'd been relieved about. Like luring her with the fact that vampires could see about ten times more stars than humans could. He had been proud of that once; it was unfair and sneaky and it had almost convinced his star-gazing Mary-Lynnette to become a vampire. Besides, it had sounded quite romantic without actually meaning anything in particular-and back then Ash had liked things that sounded romantic but didn't pin you down to anything. Even when he'd realized how he felt about Mary-Lynnette, he'd tried to get out of it. Ash was, in the old parlance, a rover.

He'd also been an early bloomer and by the time he was twelve he had killed his man (well, vampire really: a husky fellow twice his height). As far as making his man, or woman, well he wasn't one to kiss and tell, but from then on, according to lamia tradition, he was an adult, and free to do what he wanted. He did, making the most out of what he had learned. He hadn't enjoyed killing, even if it had been in self-defense, and he developed a smooth tongue and a ready wit as well as a long, lean, tough catlike body that allowed him to avoid doing any more of it. He also found that a smooth tongue, a ready wit, and a long, lean, catlike body were helpful in another area-in dealing with the opposite sex. He'd spent as much of his time as possible in loving his neighbor, and if that had occasionally included the choice between an undignified exit out the window and the blacking of the eye of his neighbor's steady boyfriend; well, he'd done as the spirit moved him.

But that was then and this was now. He had met Mary-Lynnette, that infernal nuisance of an angel, who had just reached into his chest and pulled his beating heart out, and squeezed. He didn't know how she'd done it. He'd been too busy trying to dodge kicks to his shins. He'd heard of the Soulmate Principle but he'd never imagined that such a tragedy could happen to him. He knew other words for what had happened. It was being caught. It was being tamed. It was even-unbelievably for a rover-being caught and tamed and liking it.

But once it had happened, what was he supposed to do? Hang himself? Didn't work for vampires. Jump in front of a train? Ditto. No, what you had to do was just go down to the nearest jewelry shop and merrily buy a ring-and make damn sure it was a nice one.

After all, who wanted to wear an unfashionable nose-ring?

And then his darling Mary-Lynnette had found him seriously underweight in good deeds, compassion, and repentance, and she had thrown him out of the boat. He was expected to make good on all three deficiencies before she would even think of hauling him back out of the water. She seriously expected him to atone for each wickedness he'd performed, in a way that would wipe out the original wrong.

Quinn had gotten off easier than he had, and Quinn was over four hundred years older than him.

Even at that price, with his word of honor behind it, his angel refused to promise anything. We'll see, she had said. Had there ever been such a belle dame sans merci?

Meanwhile, he was not even allowed to see her, not even when she had been living in the San Francisco Time Bubble. It left him thinking all the more about her, her quick eagerness at anything unknown, her bravery in the face of danger, her kindness to small things. Or the sharpness of her wit, ever looking for something to whet itself against. Or her eyes, clear larkspur blue and snapping with interest or anger or excitement. Or her triangular kitten-shaped face that somehow took the edge off all her insults. Or her long limbs, tanned from all the work she did outside...

It was better not to think about things like that, although it was difficult to help it. The warmth of her, the smell of her... But he couldn't afford to get distracted. Because Mary-Lynnette, after spending years in the San Francisco Bubble, had finally decided that the Apocalypse wasn't coming immediately and had gone off to college. In fact, he had just been thinking about requesting an Audience with her Highness to see if she might approve just slightly more of him now. She might even-if he had bared his inmost soul to her-have agreed to a new deal. He had remade himself, all for the sake of his lady, and he was eager-no, make that desperate-to see what she thought of the results.

All that had been true up until five minutes ago, when that TV anchor had announced that many towns, including Cambridge in Massachusetts, had been "bombed" and were now a wasteland of raging fire and destruction.

And then there had been just one thought in his mind. Find her. Find Mary-Lynnette and face the end together. Whatever else was happening he had the illogical feeling that she needed him, and the thought was enough to drive him insane.

Insane enough that when Thierry Descoudres, the Lord of the Night World, who was also the owner of this Bubble and everything in it, had turned away from his consultations for a moment, Ash had walked right up to him.

And fallen on his knees.

He, Ash, who had never begged for anything in his life, had begged. He'd pleaded with Thierry for a helicopter, the only way to reach Cambridge in time, he believed.

But that was impossible. All the Night World military helicopters had already been sent out, some to pick up vital personnel, some to try to track down the dragons who were doing this "bombing" of major cities.

But Ash knew that there was something else: Thierry's private helicopter.

And so he had stayed on his knees.

"Thierry-Lord Thierry-I know you have a personal helicopter. Please. I'll only keep it for a few hours, maybe less. Lord Thierry"-he was aware that everyone in the room was looking at Ash Redfern: Ash, the imperturbable, Ash, the Rude, the Snide and the Sarcastic, Ash Redfern, the lineal descendant of Hunter himself, groveling on his knees "it's my soulmate. She goes to Harvard. I know she's not dead." He gave the silver cord a tug, just to comfort himself with this at least: the other end wasn't flapping loose. "I know she's not dead. But she needs me. She may be hurt, trapped... in danger of her life. Please, Thierry. I'll never ask anything of you again," he added, wildly, because Thierry wasn't saying anything, but was looking at him with those great dark, bottomless eyes, eyes that were the way they had been before he had found Hannah.

And when Ash couldn't put the illusion of safety behind him any longer by babbling, Thierry had a chance to speak.

First, though, he just looked at Ash with those sorrowful, infinitely compassionate eyes. The bubble of hope that had been rising in Ash wobbled. Finally Thierry said, "Ash, I can't do it. Not because I don't want to, but because that helicopter isn't mine to give or loan any longer. I gave it to our newest member to use, to evacuate her family. It belongs to Sarah Strange."

Ash felt the shock go through him as he remembered; the stomach-hollowing fear. Not so very long ago he had called this girl's soulmate a whole packet of venomous names, and for some reason that he couldn't retrieve immediately he'd said something about her as well. "Sniveling little girlfriend." Not wise. Not wise at all. M'Lyn would be disgusted with him. If M'Lyn was all right. If M'Lyn was safe enough to be able to think at all. Slowly, excruciatingly aware of the eyes on him, he got to his feet. Even more slowly, he turned toward Sarah. He made himself throw a glance at her face.

Not good. She was looking serious. He had already tried the throwing-himself- to-his-knees trick. And maybe she could be taken in by that if he tried it again, but suddenly Ash was sick of himself, and his tricks, and his smooth silver tongue.

One foot in front of the other, he made his way to Sarah. He was still looking down. She was short compared to his height, so that his looking down meant looking her right in the face.

He stopped and took a deep breath and then he looked her directly in the eyes. "I'll go on my knees if you want. I just thought maybe it might look cheap, after... Can I tell you why I want the helicopter?"

She nodded, gravely, obviously trying to fight off her own terror at the situation they were in. She was such an ordinary slip of a girl, he tried to tell himself, but she'd been with Lady Hannah before dinner and Winfrith had dolled her up until she was almost frighteningly beautiful. She was wearing that sweeping corn-colored gown, with her light brown hair up, and what looked like several million dollars of canary diamonds. And in spite of all that, it was her face that caught you. Huge eyes the color of deep jungle pools-aquamarine in its purest, truest blue. A sweet wide mouth that was trying to be stern but was quivering too much to do its job right. No makeup that he could see. But no makeup or jewelry or other adornments could be more attractive than the involuntary quiver of that mouth.

Who was this girl?

Ash was an expert in perhaps half-a-dozen things. One of them was women. If he tried, he could find the proper key to unlock this nature child who didn't need makeup-but he didn't try. It wasn't the two two-legged guard dogs on either side of her, Kierlan Drache and Mal Harman, each glaring at him as if they wished he would drop dead with no further ado, either.

It was the pulse in the tender column of her throat. Vampires always watched an opponent's throat. And this girl wasn't amused, as you could tell by the mouth quiver; and she wasn't just frightened...she was terrified. Her heart was pounding so hard that it almost shook the slim body in the sweeping gown. And if it gave her any comfort to have the helicopter-well, Thierry had given it to her for a reason. Ash would find some other way to get to Mary-Lynnette. He'd walk before he'd take this girl's last comfort.

He turned away abruptly. "Sorry to bother you," he said, and turned away.

Now he was thinking: what else? A car? -and felt a gentle hand on his arm. And then

he heard the most beautiful words he ever had before.

"Don't go."

He half turned, afraid to hope, and she went on. She had a beautiful voice, he thought wildly, very young, but very gentle. "The helicopter's not really mine. And I don't really have anyone to save out there-"

"Alan and the Alan-ettes?" one of the two guard dogs suggested.

"Her step-father and step-brothers and sisters," the other one translated.

"This area hasn't been attacked. I'll find some other way-"

Ash groaned internally. No. "No."

Sarah looked muleheaded. "Yes."

"No. I mean it."

"Yes. I mean it."

He'd found himself a girl as stubborn as Mary-Lynnette. He hadn't thought they made that kind anymore.

"Before this sinks to the level of rather ludicrous nobility"-Quinn's dry voice cut through the murmuring that had taken over the room-"we can settle it in an instant. Flip a coin."

"A coin?" somebody said, "Over a matter of life and death like this?"

"No," Sarah said, suddenly gaining authority from somewhere, drawing it out of the air to wear it like a cloak. "We'll work it out; one uses the helicopter first, then the other one." Then she did something so unexpected that Ash almost jumped. She turned to him and said, "Tell me about Mary-Lynnette."

Ash opened his mouth and shut it. He did know women. He'd bet he already had the key that would turn this one. But would that be fair? He thought a little more and decided it was when Mary-Lynnette's life was on the line. It couldn't be wrong just to show this girl, Sarah, how much she was like his M'Lyn.

"She loves walking in the night forest," Ash said slowly. "She knows all the different plants. It was out there, at night, that she finally accepted she was my soulmate," he added, the words coming more quickly now. "But even when she admitted that we were soulmates she wouldn't let me make her a vampire-and it takes a strong character to refuse me when I'm wheedling."

Sarah shuddered slightly. Ash could read it as if she'd said the words aloud, "I'm no strong character, but I would never be a vampire."

Terrific. She was prejudiced against blood-drinkers, on top of everything. Ash winced before he could stop himself; Sarah drew a step back.

"It's the way I was raised," Ash said softly. "I don't think you can really imagine it, but try to think of the Amish. I was raised in isolation like that. The only customs I knew were the ones my family had created. We didn't have slaves. We had... human servants. They weren't badly treated."

Sarah was looking at him with absolute horror.

Something inside Ash folded. "You're right. It was terrible. 'Abomination.' That's what

she said."

"He and his sisters and Rashel and I went a while ago and cleared it out," Quinn said, in the same tones he'd use if he were saying they had all gone to a concert together. If you could imagine Quinn going to a concert.

Sarah looked even more horrified at this.

Ash suddenly wished desperately for Rowan, the oldest of his sisters. She would look at them all with her steady, clear-sighted brown eyes and they would understand. "We didn't hurt anybody unnecessarily," he said heavily. "We did use wood and fire when they were needed. Mostly they weren't; without Hunter; the vampire's spirits were broken. We-" He broke off. The naive girl in front of him was a vampire virgin. She had only just been introduced to the Night World and the kind of people who lived there. She found all vampires repulsive.

She's due for a shock soon, he thought, glancing at her guard dogs.

"May I try again?" he asked and was desperately grateful when she swallowed and said huskily, "Yes."

"Mary-Lynnette wouldn't approve of me trying to make her a special case. But she really does deserve it. She's one of the people who'll help put the world back together after-all this." He gestured to the banks of computer screens showing the ruins of the earth's cities. "She's kind and she's brilliant and she loves the stars. She'll put the earth back together just to get to the stars. And," he realized that his voice was shaking-"I can feel that she needs me." He clutched unthinkingly at the silver cord. "As long as she's alive I can track her and help her, but if I wait too long, or if she gets too weak..." He bowed his head. He couldn't finish, and he couldn't look her in the face. His longing for Mary-Lynnette was like a physical pain, so that if anyone had asked 'do you miss her?" it would be like asking, "do you miss your leg?"

"Do you realize, you told me all about her, but you never once mentioned what she looked liked?" asked Sarah. Was there a hint of approval in her voice?

"She's-well, what does it matter? She's dark with fair skin. And she's tall. She's not beautiful, I suppose, but she's striking. If you ever saw her you wouldn't forget her. And she's my soulmate." He turned away.

"You can have the helicopter."

"And I don't even know how long I can go on, needing to go to her without going

"Ash," said Quinn. "She said you could have it."

Once, he would have swung her off her feet and spun her around the room, regardless of the disasters outside. Or else taken the opportunity for a celebratory kiss on the mouth. Now, he fell involuntarily to his knees and kissed her hand, clasped it to his cheek a moment and then jumped up.

He couldn't help but turn back, though, for a moment, curious as a cat. "Thank you. I do thank you. But why did you do it?"

"I found out why you loved her."

"And how does that make a difference?"

"You didn't start by telling me how beautiful she was. If you'd said that I'd have known you weren't really soulmates."

Love Mary-Lynnette just for her outside? He'd fallen in love with her at first sight-but that was through the rosy glow of the soulmate principle. There was so much more of Mary-Lynnette inside to love that her inside had showed on her outside-or something. Anyway Ash had seen too many beautiful outsides with nothing of worth inside them to get caught that way. Even an eternally beautiful woman with no mind to sharpen his against would be a deadly bore shortly. Whereas Mary-Lynnette's mind was so beautiful that he would never get tired of looking at and the outer packaging was almost irrelevant.

"I love her because I love her," he concluded. "I'll get to her if I have to walk all the way, but she needs me now. I-can take the helicopter now?"

"Right now. And-Ash?"

"Yes?"-sharply. He was suspicious to the last.

"Take care of yourself. And call me whenever you can and tell me if she—if Mary-Lynnette's okay."

"Of course," Ash said automatically. He stared at this willow wand of a girl who seemed to really care about other peoples' problems. It didn't occur, even to his cynical mind, that she'd said it because once Mary-Lynnette was safe, the bird would be free for Sarah's own use. And if it had, he'd have known that it wasn't true. She cared.

He just wished he could bring himself to like her companions, especially Kierlan. As a rogue himself, he knew when a guy was an even bigger one. And he'd swear that this guy was off the charts.

Mary-Lynnette

When Mary-Lynnette came to she was sprawled beside her bed. Her first thought was: earthquake. But the room was still jolting-roughly enough to send college textbooks cascading out of the shelves, papers and pens flying off the desk, and clothes spilling out of the closet, all without stopping as if the building were taking hit after hit from bombs. At the same time there was a noise like the roar of a giant flamethrower.

Thank God my best telescope is back in Briar Creek, she thought a touch wildly. And then she thought, but what's happening in Briar Creek? As the room settled down, she took out her earplugs. Mary-Lynnette was at heart country girl, used to the shriek of the bluejay and the creak of the ponderosa pine. Here, she just wasn't used to the sounds of a bustling campus and the streets around it. Her earplugs were good earplugs, attenuating up to 40 decibels, at frequencies from 125 to 8000 hertz, and when she was wearing them it was almost impossible to hear anything from the outside world. But now, taking them out made no difference. The world was as silent as if she still had them in. She got up and slipped her feet into sneakers and went to the window to see the world.

She looked out on hell.

The sky was a strange dark orange streaked with pale green. She guessed the effect came somehow from flames that were reflecting off low-lying clouds. She could see the actual fires here and there through gray smoke. What she couldn't see or hear-was traffic, not the wild honking of horns in the distance, not the bass roar of a truck nor the squeal of brakes, nor the hooting of ambulances.

The silence was downright eerie. There was no shouting, no thud of running footsteps, no alarms. It was as if everyone in the world had disappeared except her. The campus was an island to itself; set back from outside streets, but from what she could see through the window, there were abandoned cars stopped everywhere-even on the grass-with their driver's doors open. As if people had just stopped, got out, and walked away.

How long was I unconscious? Mary-Lynnette was a human, but in some ways she had a vampire's enhanced senses. She ought to have been able to hear something from the streets.

She stood there for one moment, caught by the sight, by the soundlessness, and then she began to move.

Stepping back from the window, she unzipped her sweatshirt and dropped it behind her. She then stepped out of her sweatpants bottoms, underpants, and socks, heeling the socks off and flinging the clothes away without looking to see where they fell. She was at the same time leaning to reach for a very special gray duffel bag in the back of her closet. Finding it, she pulled it forward. In another second she was dressing in a heavy dark shirt, Levis, thick socks and sturdy boots, suitable for cross-country walking. She topped the outfit with another sweater, added a windbreaker with detachable hood, and then finally gave a few licks and a promise with a brush to her wavy dark hair-so much shorter than it had been years ago.

Reversible hat in pocket: check. A pair of sturdy hiking boots and extra socks: check. Basic toiletries: in duffel bag: check. Laminated maps of the area: check. Waterproof pad and pen in notebook: check. Several MRE (Meals Ready To Eat) for basic field rations, extra bags of jerky, peanuts and a few power bars: check. Water in eco-friendly disposable pouches: check. Two flashlights, with extra batteries for each: check. Compressed block of toilet paper, space blankets the size of candy bars, sleeping bag the size of a thick book: check. Stun gun, mace, brass knuckles, cosh, and a few other little pieces of equipment that classed the user as a realist: check.

The bag was not graceful, or cool, or glamorous. The only statement the bag made was that this princess planned to rescue herself.

Mary-Lynnette had known for years about the Apocalypse. It was just that, like

everyone else, she had stopped believing it was coming.

Mary-Lynnette didn't hoist the bag to her shoulders right away. She did something she'd been putting off, something so frightening that tears were dripping down her lashes even as she opened a safe in the closet and pulled out a strange looking cell phone, bulkier than the usual and with two thick black antennas.

Then she made a phone call.

Ash

From the launch pad, Ash climbed into the luxurious, black-leather padded helicopter's rear cabin. He almost expected to be offered a glass of champagne by a crisply uniformed flight attendant. Ash had been in many different kinds of helicopters but he had never before seen this kind of flying tank turned into an oak-and-leather conference room that was the epitome of luxury.

Thierry Descoudres, Lord of the Night World, the lawful ruler of every vampire, witch, shapeshifter, and tea-leaf reader in the world, believed in going first class everywhere. The passenger compartment here looked like the interior of a small airplane. Its roomy, leather upholstered seats were designed to slide on rails toward or away from each other. A gigantic refrigerated compartment in back reminded hedonists irresistibly of that phantom champagne, and doctors irresistibly of necessary medications (as did a screened-off area to one side where everything up to and including major surgery could be done); there were magazines, fresh flowers, munchies, flagons of water, all securely contained. There were headsets for those who wanted to talk to the crew, earphones for those who wanted to listen to music, and ear-mufflers for those who just plain didn't like noise. There were night-vision goggles for humans not naturally endowed with night vision, and individual computer screens for passengers, which at the moment were all showing a room full of somber-looking people in formal dress having a polite and vehement argument-the war room, Ash thought. They'd been interrupted during that formal dinner by the Apocalypse. In general, the chopper had anything a reasonable traveler could want.

After Ash was inside, black-visored figures helped aboard two large wolves that were restrained by neither harness nor leash, but that each wore a silver collar with an emblem: one a stylized rose and the other the simple outline of an archetypical flower with five petals.

"Hey, Remy; hiya, Lupe." Ash said. The werewolves turned keen, intelligent eyes on him. The silver rose meant that Remy, the all-black wolf with a blaze of white on his forehead, worked directly for Lord Thierry; the simple five-petalled flower was the symbol for Iliana, the Witch child, and meant that Lupe, the brindled wolf, was working for the Wild Powers right now.

Inside his own head, Ash raised his eyebrows. Thierry was providing him with everything. His personal helicopter, a highly trained crew; werewolves from S.E.A.R.C.H.; everything. Now it was going to be up to Ash. If he couldn't find Mary-Lynnette with this lot, he didn't deserve her.

The two wolves headed toward the back of the spacious rear cabin to make themselves secure and comfortable in their own way. Yes, Ash had more than everything a reasonable person could want, but what he wanted was something unreasonable. "Can I talk to the pilot?" he asked of the black-dad, black-helmeted figure who had boosted him into the helicopter. His words were ignored, which he took pretty much as meaning, "No, you ungrateful loony."

"The pilot's probably pretty busy right now, sir," a voice said, or rather shouted, from just a few feet away.

Ash almost jumped. The only thing you could complain about in this helicopter was that it was noisy. He'd logged the presence of the flight officer in his mind and then forgotten about him. The man was fiddling with a HF headset which seemed to blend into the quiet luxury of the accoutrements around him, his black and silver uniform almost making him disappear.

But his presence was there. Ash should never have lost sight of it.

I am really, really tense, Ash thought. He checked, found the officer to be a vampire like himself, and began a quieter, telepathic conversation.

Sorry. You probably know; my name is Ash-

I don't know anybody in the Night World who doesn't know Ash Redfern, sir. I'm Petty Officer Nate Campell.

About the pilot; I just wanted to ask him-

Her, the navigator interrupted.

Her, then, if we could do something like a routine Coast Guard search pattern for Mary-Lynnette, with me conning for the pilot. I don't know the first thing about the Night World military, so I don't know if everybody's familiar with the Coastie's system of search-" Here he was interrupted again, politely but firmly. If you'll look around, sir, you'll see this is a modified Sikorsky H-60 Jayhawk-

"Paint me blue like a baboon's bottom!" Ash hadn't even glanced at the helicopter's profile. Thierry had probably never used it for an actual rescue before, but-

Lord Thierry sent you a crew that's all ex-Coastguard or trained by Coastguard, the other vampire went on, forestalling Ash's next question. And the werewolves are here for onshore search.

Then Ash looked behind him. Through the rear jump door, someone had just dumped packets of flares and chemical lights next to the collapsible wire basket for survivors into the immaculate interior of Thierry's private helicopter. Ash started to address them, then checked the person's features in what light there was to be had. "Thank you, ma'am."

"No problem; I've got to secure all that before we take off. And I'm not a "ma'am," sir; I'm Petty Officer Georgie Douglas, shapeshifter and the rescue swimmer."

"Thierry thinks I'm going to find Mary-Lynnette in the water?" Horrifying images rose in Ash's head.

"Well, sir, I guess Lord Thierry figures that there's a big pond close to the target area: we call it the Atlantic Ocean." The young woman's smile took the edge off her words. "And the last vampire enclaves we know of in that zone were on islands out there in that pond. If they're taking her there—this basket isn't just for water rescue. It's for picking folks off boats, all sorts of things."

"I know about the enclaves." Ash remembered what it had felt like, being part of the crew that had helped burn them to the ground and take the occupants captive-the ones who hadn't fought to the death, anyway.

"That was a proud day for us all, sir," Georgie Douglas said. Ash had been broadcasting his thoughts unintentionally. He really was close to losing control.

"But you think any vampires after her might still head for there," Ash said. "And that they definitely will go for her."

The way the rescue swimmer looked down was answer enough.

After the last of the equipment was stowed, Ash asked again to talk to the pilot. After a moment, everyone was connected to the cockpit, one way or another, and Ash had been introduced to Lieutenants Raleigh and Simms in the cockpit. When the two-way mirror separating the cockpit from the passenger cabin was turned off he could see the pilot, a young black woman wearing one of those ebony and silver helmets, and the co-pilot, another young black woman, also helmeted. They were both vampires.

"Okay, so everybody's familiar with the Coastguard search patterns," Ash said, getting straight to the issue. "I just don't know if you people are familiar with S.S.O."

They looked at each other and Ash could practically hear the pilot say, "Huh?" "Soulmate Search Operation. It's experimental, but this is going to be the best chance to prove that it works. One soulmate homes in on the other one's psychic profile. I figure that's the only way to run an operation like this, since we don't know where the target, my soulmate Mary-Lynnette, is. We don't know whether she's gone to ground or on the move. We don't know whether she's been taken captive, maybe out to sea. We don't know much of anything. But she's sending out a signal like an EPIRB-psychically-and I'm the only one that can pick that up. The closer we get, the stronger it is. I figure it should be no problem."

And then he swallowed, because it was a new idea and NIH-not invented here. This Coast Guard crew was used to homing in on the warbling of a radio distress beacon, and then working as a finely-tuned team to get the aircraft to its goal. They weren't used to an unproved program that relied-completely-on a civilian's feelings of romance.

Ash heard a new voice, concise, feminine, used to command, in his mind. It was on a private channel in his head. Must be the pilot. Has this ever been done in a field situation, sir? she asked slowly.

No. Just practice runs.

There was another moment and then to his great relief she said for all to hear, I can't think of a better cause with which to christen it. Welcome aboard. So you're doing the conning for me? From the beginning?

Just like a sea rescue, even if we never leave land. That's the one big advantage of it-you can look for anybody without them knowing you're after them.

In other words, fly high. You got it, sir. We'll be all over them before they know were in the area.

Just one other thing... Ash liked to be on a first name basis with those who were responsible for his life. Call me Ash, please.

From the cockpit came, I'm Cobra, and this is Mantra. Both from Master Thierry's personal entourage.

Cobra? Ash thought. Mantra? Are we in a comic book now?

I meant your real names, please, he said persuasively. Oh, come on-we may all be dying together soon.

There was a pause of ten measured seconds. Then, finally, I am Courtney Raleigh, sir. And another voice, mellow and just slightly amused, I'm the copilot, sir. Tracy Simms. Pleased to make your acquaintance.

Something inside Ash whimpered softly and said, you're being flown out to fight dragons by a Courtney and a Tracy who both sound about two years out of high school? But he managed to say "hello" politely.

But not without revealing some of his reservations, apparently. When he was done, the pilot said sweetly, Close, but not quite right sir. It's Kourtney, with a "K," sir; and Tracee, with two ees at the end. And we've both won the Distinguished Flying Cross, sir. Ash's mind gave up, then. It was beaten. He apologized.

A few minutes later they were speeding along the runway, and then Kourtney Raleigh pulled power and they were going up, fast, fast into the blackness above.

Mary-Lynnette

"Help!"

There it was again. Mary-Lynnette was jogging roughly parallel to Oxford Street. She had just gone past the massive Science Center and was heading by Jefferson Hall, when she'd first heard the cry. The campus itself was decimated. Harvard Yard, where her dorm was, looked as if it had been bombed. While she jogged she used the odd, bulky cell phone she'd unshipped back at her room. Nothing. Not even a busy signal or recorded message. And that proved that something was wrong-very wrong. The Night World telephone system was so good somebody had suggested it must be subetheric. Not true-but it did make use of some pretty amazing microchips and a dash or sorcery, and it operated on frequencies that weren't supposed to be open to the public.

She was trying to get in touch with her family, with her brother Mark, and Ash's three sisters, all in the San Francisco Bubble. They had several phones like this. So did her father in Oregon. And the fact that she couldn't even raise one sent a feeling like the trickle of an ice cube down her back, and a prickling all over her skin.

Bad news, kiddo, she thought. You'd think at least that Ash might have called.

"Help-"

There it was. Mary-Lynnette moved smoothly into higher gear and ducked into Jefferson Hall. She kept up the run; this building didn't look at all stable. And she tried not to think of Ash as she went. She was tempted-more than a little-to tug on the silver cord that connected them so that at least she would at least know he was alive. But what could kill Ash? she thought sardonically, still straining her ears. He would survive a universal flood. Paddling in a ducky, boat, getting a tan.

"Please, help! Somebody!

There! It wasn't a classroom; it was coming from off to the right, from one of the teacher's offices. Mary-Lynnette saw a door ajar. She looked inside and at first saw only chaos, then realized what had happened. A smallish girl had been sitting at the largeish desk when a row of heavy steel bookcases that had been stacked all around the desk had fallen. Now, they had formed a cage around her so that she couldn't pull away from the desk again, or even lift her head.

"Please! I'm trapped! Please!"

"It's okay. I'm here," she said. "And I'll get you out; just wait a sec."

"Oh, thank God, thank God!"

"Don't be scared," Mary-Lynnette said, in big-sister mode already. Just give me a minute."

"I'll try. But it was so awful when everyone started going toward that-noise. That call. I wanted to go to, but I couldn't. I was stuck."

"A-call?" Mary-Lynnette was bewildered.

"Yes. If you'd heard it, you'd never forget it--but it's too hard to describe. It was a terrible sound, awful, but when I heard it I had to get to it. But I couldn't."

That may have been your good luck, Mary-Lynnette thought.

"Is that where everybody else has gone?"

"Is everyone gone?"

"Yeah. It looks like we're the only two people on campus."

"Thank God you came to save me," the girl under the shelves said quietly, then added something in a foreign language; Mary-Lynnette guessed it was a prayer or saying. After a moment she said, "My name is Devi Srinivasa." She laughed. "But with my last name, most people just say Devi S. What's yours?"

"Mary-Lynnette Carter. But with my first name most people leave some part of it out even though I ask them not to. I answer to Mary, or Mare, or Lynn, or M'Linn-okay, now I'm going to lift this top shelf off to the left. It might hurt as the blood flow comes back." "I'll help push. No, please-I want to. Just tell me which way."

As Mary-Lynnette got the steel bookcase off the girl she could see more of her. She was very small, with bones like a bird, and dark hair falling in one long braid down her back. There was a long, busy time, during which Mary-Lynnette figured out which bookcase needed to come off next, and which way it ought to go. At last they were down to one. "What were you doing in here?" Mary-Lynnette asked, prying the last of the bookcases off and pushing it across the desk. And almost in the same breath, "Are you okay? Is anything broken?"

"My wrist hurts a little, but I'm sure it's not broken." Then Devi's chin came up in determination. "As for the other, I could ask you the same question. What are you doing here?"

"I'm here because I was hiking out," Mary-Lynnette said. "And then I heard this little thin sound like a call for help from the rubble here. Do you know there's one whole wall missing from the Science Center?"

"No." Devi had managed stand up, and was fumbling around the desk. She found a computer disk. "Got it. And it looks undamaged. He Ram... Now, if I can just find my folder

"Forget your folder. This whole building could come down at any minute and kill us both. Let me help you over the bad spots and let's get out of here."

Devi hesitated, then put the disk in her pocket and let Mary-Lynnette help her crawl over the desk-there was no other way, the shelves that had fallen all around were too unstable-then off the other side. They grinned at each other briefly when Devi was free, and Mary-Lynnette slipped her backpack back on.

"Okay, this way. Hey, do you know how to use a taser? Or Mace?

Devi shook her head. "Sorry."

"Never mind."

"I did have an uncle who was a priest," Devi offered, apparently out of the blue.

"That's nice," muttered Mary-Lynnette, busy finding a place they could get through the walls to the outside of the building. It was dangerous because of cables sticking up from nowhere and piles of debris that looked solid, but weren't.

"The world will be grateful to you for you helping me rescue this disk," Devi continued. "That was my mother's office. She is a physicist, but mostly she works at the Polar Station. In the Antarctic, you know. She e-mails her findings back here. We have a sort of system-" She went on talking, but Mary-Lynnette couldn't really understand what it was about. Besides, she had something else to listen for.

She found the whole story of the "call" extremely disturbing. She had no idea what could make a noise that would draw you to it-even though it was a terrible noise and you didn't really want to go. It was Night World stuff, no doubt about that. But from the looks of the city around her, the area had been bombed, and that wasn't like any Night World stuff she'd ever heard about.

What could wreak such havoc, but leave people alive to get out of their cars and follow some eerie "call . . . ?"

Nothing natural, that was certain, nothing natural.

Off campus, walking beside cars parked at crazy angles, their footsteps always accompanied by the crunching of glass, she tried to keep her mind on track. They were two young girls, and night was falling. That meant that they were automatically in trouble, in a city where all the rules had broken down at once. And Mary-Lynnette had a feeling, a sixth sense that said she hadn't been left alone on that campus for nothing. That there were people just waiting for her to get out into the open, people after her specifically.

The hairs on the back of her neck lifted suddenly. She held her breath and listened. Yes.

"Devi?" she whispered as they reached Windell Street.

"Yes, Mary-Lynnette?"

"Since you don't fight, can you get ready to run? There are people behind us-don't look-and they're not nice people. They're not following us to ask us if we need help. They're bad people, and I'm going to have to deal with them sooner or later. But first I'm going to get my back to a wall. Then I'll say, 'Now!' and you run away as fast as you can and don't look back. Don't worry about me. Just run. Do you understand?"

"I understand, but if you think that I'm going to leave you alone after you rescued me, you're"-Devi knocked on her own forehead-"suffering from concussion, I suppose." Mary-Lynnette almost laughed out loud. "All right, but don't try to fight them. These aren't normal people. Run and try to find help if you can."

"In a city where everyone has disappeared except us?"

"Well, you can try-shh! Don't talk." Mary-Lynnette froze. She had just heard something different behind them.

It was glass crunching. Not loudly, furtively. Mary-Lynnette put a finger to her lips. Sure, there ought to be looters and worse stalking the buildings, but her sixth sense told her that these followers were after her. Ahead she saw a little cubby hole of rubble that protected them on two side. She motioned with the tiniest tilt of her head that she and Devi should get into it. Devi looked frightened, but obeyed, and silently.

And not a moment too soon. They had just stepped in when the crunchings got louder and louder. "Where'd they go?" a clear male voice said.

"They just-disappeared," another one answered.

"Nobody disappears on my watch," a third, menacing-but-laid-back sounding voice said. "They're twenty feet in front of you, to the left. Use your eyes, since it looks like there's nothing worthwhile in between them."

Voice One chuckled sycophantically. Mary-Lynnette was already talking to Devi. "I'll be using Mace and this stun gun, so stay away from me. Swing my backpack at them, if you can. It's pretty heavy; you might knock somebody over. And be ready to run when I say 'run.""

Devi looked at the backpack doubtfully. "I really think that I-"

"We don't have time to talk. Here they come "

"But I still feel that perhaps I would be of more use-"

And then the first thug came around the corner.

Mary-Lynnette felt the small hairs trembling at the back of her neck. He looked human, but something told her he wasn't. The jubilant howl he set up when he found them might have helped her reach this conclusion. She raised the can of Mace and gave him a faceful, holding her own breath.

"You-bitch!" He shook his head angrily but seemed in no way incapacitated by the Mace. Just then Guy Number Two arrived. Guy One was still cursing, but was now blocking their way onward, so they were stuck in their cubby hole.

"We got her. She looks just like the picture," Guy Two, the new arrival, said.

"Stay behind me," Mary-Lynnette gasped, thinking that it might have been safer for Devi to go her own way. Obviously, they were after her, Mary-Lynnette, and not any of Mary-Lynnette's chance-met companions.

"Okay-run," Mary-Lynnette said, making a dive for the first guy, who was still doing nothing but congratulating himself. Maybe she could hold them both off while Devi got away. But instead of running, Devi dropped the backpack, did a beautiful pirouette, and kicked Guy Two in the head. Then she rounded on the first guy, who was trying to slug Mary-Lynnette, mulekicked him in the chest to get his attention, and then unleashed a whiplash of a kick somewhat lower, causing him to bellow in pain like an ox.

"Now, let's run," Devi said, not even out of breath. They ran.

Mary-Lynnette gasped, "I thought you were just some pacifist. You wouldn't even take Mace!"

days."

"My uncle was a genuine fighting priest. They're growing more and more scarce these days.”

"I can see why, if they fight each other they way you fought him!"

They came out to the streets. Everything in the night seemed supernaturally clear, and Mary-Lynnette felt she could hear the drop of a bobby pin. They look a moment to look up and down the smoldering street and then started toward a flattened playground.

"I'd give anything for a drink. I was stuck under those bookcases so long, yelling." Still trotting toward the playground, Mary-Lynnette pulled out a super-sipper full of water and gave it to her. "Just keep moving."

"Oh, God, you're like a miracle. My family would be glad to adopt you."

They got to the playground. There was plenty of space there, so an enemy couldn't jump out at you from concealment. But there was also nothing but space, nowhere to conceal themselves.

It looked as if that wasn't going to matter for very long. They could hear little rustling movements on either side of them, and now, movements ahead. They were being herded into that playground.

"Did your uncle tell you what to do when attacked by about twenty guys at once?" Mary-Lynnette asked.

"I think he would have answered with a suggestion to prepare my soul for the coming of my next life. I hope it will be more peaceful."

"Terrific," Mary-Lynnette said.

It wasn't just noises now. They could see glimpses of faces and hands in the large circle that was slowly tightening on them, closing in. There were far, far more than even Devi could manage. Over twenty. More than that.

And, in the hands, the glitter of steel.

And the remarks, of course. Mary-Lynnette just filtered them out: the invitations to go to a knife-wielder's house to party; the personal remarks, the smooching noises. If you were female you had to learn to not hear this kind of stuff, just let it fade into a sort of hum in the background. She hoped Devi's uncle had taught Devi the same kind of trick.

Funny, though, that when they were really up against it, two unexpected things happened. One was that some of the taunting got through. "You an' me, we're gonna partee later," a tall thick voice said, and she had a glimpse of a hand waving what looked like a machete. "After our-uh, employers-are done with you, we get to have a good time!"

You sap, Mary-Lynnette, thought, your employers are never going to be done with us, and you'll be incredibly lucky if they let you out of this alive.

The second unexpected thing was that another one of those earthquake-like events happened, while brilliant red light blossomed. The sound wave hit them almost instantaneously. Missile fire? It was like nothing that Mary-Lynnette had heard or seen before. But it was like something she had been dreading.

If only she'd been able to get the emergency signal on. But whoever was conducting this war was smart; blocking the stolen frequencies that the Night World used for emergency contact was a clever, if horrific, idea.

"Hey, girlie!" Somehow this deep voice did keep cutting through her filters. "I'm Mannie here, and I've decided I like you. You come with Mannie right now, no fuss, and we won't turn you over. The rest of them will pretend they never saw you."

Just for the heck of it, Mary-Lynnette said, "And this little girl goes free, right?" There was a silence, then everybody laughing at once. It wasn't nice laughter. "She's our consolation prize," one sneering voice said.

"Well, Mannie, or Manless, or whoever you are, you can go to hell. Which should feel just like home to you," Mary-Lynnette said.

Devi had been looking at Mary-Lynnette. Now, she smiled a little, grimly.

The circle was close enough now that Mary-Lynnette could see whole bodies, not just hands with silvery knives. And oh, wouldn't the circlers be enjoying themselves now. Knowing that there was no way for their victims to get away except straight up.

"Hey, can you fly, girlie?"

Yes, they knew exactly the kind of fear that their victims must be feeling, and they wanted to stretch the moments out-though not too much, since their "employers" were undoubtedly waiting.

Mary-Lynnette wondered if Devi could hold it together when she saw that some of the attackers were not human. When bodies began to lengthen and fangs to grow, when faces became grotesque and two feet dropped down to four. But it was too late to begin a lecture about the Night World now.

Strange, that at a time like this your mind wandered, she thought. Her own mind was wandering to the most absurd things: like a lazy, drawling, catlike young man who could never be joined with her-and who could never really be apart from her, either.

Oh, it was enough to drive a girl to clichés. She'd say his name then. Ash. Ash Redfern. Ash of the many-colored eyes. Ash whose dark existence depended on persuading young girls to share their blood with him. Ash of whom she was sure she knew only a tenth, if that, of his many misadventures.

He ought to have had a sidekick, she thought irrelevantly, except that Ash was his own sidekick. He knew just when to move in... and just when to let go. He'd gotten every girl he'd ever met to run after him, except one. The truth was, that Ash made his living off women, and that he was never going to change. The swelling in her chest that made her want to cry out his name just once, and have it be answered, was almost too much to stand. And then there was a roar from above them.

Goodbye, Ash, she thought, as the thug in front of her knocked her flat with a single blow into the dust that was all that was left of the playground. It would have been nice to know...

There was an explosion of light from above them.

White light.

Like a midnight sun.

And then they were all staring upward, as if they were in a scene from Close Encounters, and then a hallucination was dropping down among them. You had to be awfully close to realize that it wasn't a giant, alien Chistmas ornament, but a wire basket, threaded with those long-lasting green chemical lights for maximum visibility in the dusk.

Except that it wasn't dusk. There was a helicopter hovering over them, dangerously low, dangerously high. A real helicopter.

And Ash Redfern, not looking in the least lazy or lounging, was getting out of the basket.

"Get it! Get in!" Mary-Lynnette said frantically to Devi, trying to get up. Mannie-or someone had a foot planted firmly on her own back.

But just then Mannie flew straight out of her range of vision, with a howl that showed clearly that the flying was not of his own volition. And she was picked up. In the weird green light Ash looked-wonderful. He smiled, lazily. And then he simply swung Mary-Lynnette into the hanging, gently bobbing basket and it seemed to stiffen around her, to form a solid square.

"You, too," Ash was shouting with both mouth and mind at Devi. He tried to pick her up and swing her into the Christmas-ornament basket.

"My disk!" Devi was chasing like a chicken around her computer disk, which was being kicked back and forth by scuffling feet on the blacktop.

"Forget your disk!"

"I can't! It may mean the future of the human race!"

Just then, though, Ash got hold of Devi and swung her up in the air like a piece of thistledown, only to land with a crash in the basket, half on top of Mary-Lynnette. Then he was yelling, again with mind and voice, "Survivors in the basket! Good to go! Hoist basket!" That was when Mary-Lynnette went mad.

"No!" she screamed and then, seeming much louder to herself, No! Ash! Ash!

But the basket was going up, getting higher, leaving him behind in the dust. And he, the insolent boy, was smiling and waving to her as she was taken away, and he dodged a left cross from the first of two dozen stunned enemies.

Mary-Lynnette screamed again, her arms held down to him. Then she tried to swing herself out of the basket, but Devi shrieked in terror and she realized that she was putting them both in danger. And then they were too high, and nothing was any good.

For the very first time in her life, her heart got the better of her head. Everything went gray before her eyes. She fainted.

Devi

Devi clutched the disk of vital data to her chest, chanting prayers, while watching the dusty, gorgeous fair-haired boy's attempts to wake the dusty dark girl out of her faint.

He really was gorgeous, she thought, mourning a little because he was so obviously taken. He had hair that was white-blonde, and eyes that seemed to change color every time he glanced at, which was fairly frequently. But they were only beseeching glances, asking how to make Mary-Lynnette's spirit come back before it was ready, so she answered with sloe-eyed, but sympathetic, silence.

Finally, it was one of the uniformed figures who splashed water on her face. They had her wrapped in a sort of silvery cocoon they said was good for shock, and so far it seemed to be working with Mary-Lynnette's shaking.

First, her eyes flew open. Then she made a sound-an involuntary sound Devi thought-of horror and grief.

Then she saw Ash. Covered with dust as he was, bleeding from someone's lucky jab to his mouth, leaning over her where the uniformed ones had slid the ebony seats apart to give the cocoon room on the floor.

"Drink this before you try to talk," he said.

"Ach?" she said thickly, completely ignoring him.

"Drink."

Devi watched them and remembered how he had come swarming up the rope just like Hanuman the monkey-king, with the rope penduluming wildly in the wind, and how there hadn't seemed a chance he would ever get to the top before the wind tore him off. And how he had leaped into the helicopter, with her disk between his teeth like some old-time privateer. Mary-Lynnette had been long unconscious by then and the man in uniform behind Devi had been taking care of her.

Slowly, Mary-Lynnette drank.

"Something hot now?"

Mary-Lynnette nodded.

Devi would never forget either, this girl trying to climb down the rope below the basket, not least because it had put the basket in danger of collapsing around both of them. Heroes, Devi thought, and shook her head.

Then she chided herself. The heroes had saved her, and maybe everybody left on the planet. Her eyes filled with tears.

Mary-Lynnette was trying to sit up. Gentle hands tried to force her down and to suck at her foil of hot broth. But Mary-Lynnette was surprisingly strong. She was looking at Ash, but her eyes were clouded with dust and tears.

"-soulmate right in front of him," Devi heard when she picked up one of the earphones. "We're headed back. Diamond One out."

Devi watched unashamedly watched the lovers. Both covered with the chalky white dust, both anxious and worried.

"Here," the uniformed man, said, handing both of them flagons of water. "If you're that healthy, you can do it yourself."

A few minutes later the dark-haired girl who was washing grit off her face with water, might as well have been sparkled with stardust as she looked through the rivulets at the boy and the white-haired boy looked as if he had seen a mirage in the desert come true.

"Ash."

"Mary-Lynnette."

"You got hurt."

"It's nothing. They didn't hurt you?"

"Barely even touched me."

The boy looked as if he were trying for one last minute to be nonchalant, and then he had the girl in his arms.

Ash

She looked as if she had been through hell, and there had clearly been no more than seconds of safety when the helicopter dropped down... into that. No sane pilot would have dropped when the altimeter of her craft was reading practically zero, but Kourtney had done it...for Ash. Just the same, no rescue swimmer would have let Ash down in the basket just to hang... but Georgie had, for Ash.

No, Ash thought, disgusted with himself. Not for me. For her.

Still, the Night World was going to have to investigate using telepathy or soul bonds instead of the traditional visual sightings to pin down their survivors in wet or dry situations. The soulmate principle had worked its magic again.

And now he was looking into eyes that a man could drown in, and he knew that his beloved Mary-Lynnette was alive because she was yelling at him.

".... the risk you took!

"You didn't exactly seem to be in a risk-free situation yourself_" "How did you get that pilot to do that-"

"-batted my eyelashes and looked sweet and dumb-"

This was one too many, he saw immediately. "No, no, Mary-Lynnette, please." He slid to the floor so he could kneel and look up at her. "I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a plan. But then I saw you and I just knew I had to get to you. So there was this silence and then I said, I can do it by intervals of feet. And she said... "He suddenly changed to telepathic communication: I can maneuver it by intervals of feet, meters, millimeters, or rat farts."

And that's when you dropped down like a genuine deux de machine in some old Greek play.

And Ash smiled, but said nothing more about rat's-farts. He was slowly getting it that Mary-Lynnette wanted the real Ash, the Ash who could drop the mask of sarcasm and be himself.

"Ash?" she said aloud.

"Angel," he said fervently.

"Thank you. Obviously you saved my life."

"And possibly the human race," Devi said. She tapped her the disk at her breast

Ash glanced at his M'Lin, and then at her friend. Then he addressed Mary-Lynnette alone. His face was seriously unhappy. Umm... Mary-Lynnette? I don't know how to put this but... but...

No matter what, we don't have a lot of time?

Ah... how did you guess?

Does it matter? Ash-do we mean a few minutes, or a few days, or-

Something in between, I think.

..and all the things I wanted to say to you....... She broke off.

Mary-Lynnette

Suddenly Mary-Lynnette was back in survival mode. "Devi, you keep saying you have something that might save the entire human race. But it sounds as if a lot of cities-more than I knew about-are already destroyed. What are you talking about?"

Devi looked suddenly serious. "I know. There's nothing to do about the cities that have already been destroyed. But my mother works in Antarctica, studying meteorites. She's on vacation, right now, but she found something, something incredible. She faxed pictures of it back to her office and emailed me to get them. She told me how important they were. I figure they might fit in with what's happening right now-that somehow she got a clue or an answer or something."

Mary-Lynnette looked at Ash, who was looking doubtful. If the whole of the Night World hadn't been able to find out what was going on-or that anything had been going on at all...

But Mary-Lynnette guessed that Ash had learned a new and deep humility. He looked at the young man in uniform sitting across from them. "Will you inform the pilot of what we may be carrying? I know: we'll probably just get orders to come in as quickly as possible and we're already doing that. But let Sarah know that she'll have her helicopter back in the same condition it went out in."

"A little dustier, though." One of the werewolves, Lupe, had changed shape and was now human, a girl who was kind and gallant-looking, if not pretty, with striking hair the brindled color of a wolf's fur.

Mary-Lynnette realized that they were all trying to be brave, and that they were all trying to be brave for her sake. She wanted to thank them, and she realized that the best way was probably by... completing this mission.

"Back there," she said to Ash, lowering her voice slightly for effect. "Is that a screened-off area?"

"It is," he said, not even bothering to look. His voice was shaking slightly.

"Do you think-that for just a minute-we could-"

"I'm sure the others will entertain each other," Ash said rapidly, almost gabbling, and he took her hand and easily swung her up again. He seemed feverish as he led the way to the small area screened off for medical purposes.

Calm, Mary-Lynnette tried to think to herself. Calm. She was frightened of the synergy between Ash and herself, frightened of what it might lead to. With them, the whole was more than the sum of its parts.

Ash sat down-not slouched, not sprawled-but sat, which was a little like seeing a cat at attention, and looked at her. And Mary-Lynnette looked back. She could see the tension in his face, in his-for the moment-shadowed cobalt blue eyes. She was just about to speak when he did, and she realized that he was too focused on the moment even to see her, to read the expression on her face.

"Well?" he said. "Do me a favor will you and just say it straight out. Yes or no? Has it been enough or not? I don't suppose you know about anything else I've done-"

"Oh, Ash," she said. "Look at me. Lord Thierry himself has sent me reports on everything you've done. And if ever anyone made amendments-"

"There were times"-huskily-"when it wasn't possible to. Do you understand that? Times when the things I'd done-"

Mary-Lynnette put two fingers on his lips to stop him speaking. "They say you still act like the old Ash, full of-of bravado and vinegar. They say they wouldn't know you'd changed except that you've gone back to everyone you'd hurt before—"

"No one could do that," he said. "The living, I've had a try at."

"I've heard it all. I would have told you so a year ago, but you never came for me- "You never called for me!"

They smothered laughter, tears in their eyes at their first quarrel as lovers.

"Then you forgive me?"

"Ash." She was serious suddenly. She'd been warned that Ash might want forgiveness. "I can't give you that. Only the people you wronged-and some of them are dead now-can give forgiveness. But for my own part, I can forgive you; and I can ask your forgiveness for any wrong I've done to you."

"And that's asking a lot!" Ash's voice was suddenly stern, and Mary-Lynnette looked up at him, frightened.

"Where's my heart? Can you find that? Give it back to me again," he demanded, but this time she saw that he couldn't keep up the façade. "You took it, so you must have it. Or maybe you've lost it-"

"Ash! Lose your heart? I've lost everything else—including my family, I think"-and here she turned aside, tears coming unasked to her eyes-"but I'd swear I never lost your heart. You never gave it to me."

"I did. I did. And if I didn't, then I do. Oh, Mary-Lynnette, M'Lin, my heart. To have come so far and to end like this." His eyes were golden and filled with tears.

"This isn't what I asked you back here for." Mary-Lynnette swallowed her own tears and turned her face up. Ash wasn't much taller than she was, but he turned his face down and for a moment there was no world, no worry, nothing else except the two of them.

And it was sweet. After a moment she had to stop, with a small, caught breath.

I've missed you.

I love you.

You always made me laugh.

I love you.

I began to wonder if I would ever see you again. It hurt me so much.

Oh, Mary-Lynnette, I love you.

You're short on clever romantic responses, aren't you?

That's because I've been waiting to say one thing for so long.

They laughed, silently, against each other's lips.

"How did you manage to get there just in time?" Mary-Lynnette said finally. "It really was the last moment, you know."

"Because," Ash whispered, his lips directly at her ear, "I will always be there for you. I know how unlikely it sounds, but today I would have done anything to get to you: break down concrete walls, beg, borrow, or steal; I'd have done anything to make sure you were safe."

"Just that? That I was safe? Not even with you?"

She was teasing him, but there was a serious note behind the teasing.

He took it seriously, not smiling, returning her gaze with jade green eyes. "Not even with me. That's just the tiniest part of it. But the thought that you could be hurt, or kidnapped, or trapped, or sick-and for me not to know about it so I could try to help..."

Mary-Lynnette put two fingers over his lips again. "I don't know what's really going on tonight. But I do know one thing: we'll face it together." She suddenly balled up one fist and struck her thigh with it. "I could have had all that time with you and I sent you away."

He prevented her from striking again by putting his open hand on top of her leg. "It was the best thing you could have done for me," he said, and his eyes said he meant it. And then Mary-Lynnette knew, knew for certain, that this was a different Ash than the one she had sent away; that his heart had changed, and she felt a melting in her center. The cold, stubborn integrity that would not give in to him even when she knew she loved him was melting and she was melting with it. She felt something warm rush over her whole body.

And then, when she looked at him, he was holding a ring. "You need a special insignia to get into Harmony," he said. "But I had this one made up hoping you-would accept it as a token."

It was a white flower, with each petal supporting a diamond. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The diamonds were meant to simulate dewdrops and were graduated from tiny at the top, to seriously expensive at the bottom.

Ash, I don't have one like that for you. And it from the sounds of it I never will be able to have one made give to you.

As if that mattered. Just say you'll marry me-with a kiss.

I do! I will! But since I met you, I've worn this. She reached up and unclasped a chain from around her neck. Slowly she drew the chain out of her sweater. On it was a man's golden wedding ring, very simple, just a band. This is the ring my father married my mother with. He got my step-mother Claudine a different one. This one he gave to me to give to the man I married.

Captains of ships can marry people. Why don't we ask Kourtney if it's the same for captains of airships.

Let's do it. My Ash.

My angel.

Then there was relative silence, then but not an uneventful silence. The last doubts and fears had melted out of Mary-Lynnette's heart and instead she was melting again-into Ash's arms.

blood."

"You don't have to be afraid to kiss me," he whispered against her ear. "No human blood.”

"What?" she whispered back, finding this method of talking intriguing-and stimulating. "Not even from the blood bank?"

"Not even there." His breath, warm and then cool, tickled the side of her neck, and she started a little when he nipped at her earlobe.

"Not even there," he repeated, as if he knew what this did to her-but that was ridiculous: Ash's specialty was women. He'd had practice. "It's like with an alcoholic. You have to give it up entirely. At least I did."

For you. He did say it, but she knew it. She could feel her eyes fill with tears again. And then he kissed her, with warm strong arms around her, and the tears spilled sideways into her hair.

M'lin! I hurt you.

You know better, Mary-Lynnette thought dizzily. He must know better. Much more than that and she would undergo spontaneous combustion.

And then an alarm began to ring.

At first, Ash treated it lightly.

"Go away! We didn't ask for music and you don't qualify anyway," he said, making swiping motions in the air, while Mary-Lynnette laughed through her tears. Then Ash ignored it-until suddenly the curtain to the recess was drawn back and there was Petty Officer Georgie Douglas, blushing crimson, clearly never having imagined that she would have to barge in on a laughing, crying Ash Redfern and his laughing, weeping soulmate.

"I'm sorry," she gasped. "But I've spoken to Lieutenant Raleigh-that's Kourtney-and there's no mistake. We're being ordered to put down, find a landing spot-that is, to not return to base. We can't go home, and if we're chased, we may have to ditch."

"To ditch?"

"Maybe even in the pond. The Atlantic. Look, we'll all have parachutes, and there's a life raft, and-"

"And this helicopter sinks like a lead balloon," Ash said.

"Why," said Mary-Lynnette, suddenly in perfect command of herself, "why on earth would they want us to ditch after you've accomplished rescuing me?"

Ash

She was holding on to Ash's hand very tightly. And he was holding on to hers. Georgie's face seemed suddenly to become rigid.

"There's a bogie on our tail," she said. "And they think that it's a dragon."

Ash felt his heart drop by way of his stomach to his feet. The Cynic's Creed that never quite stopped sounding in his head said, You see? Nothing Ever Works Out. It might look as if it's going to. But in the end, it always comes down to ashes, Ash.

That was why he'd spent the first part of his life doing anything and everything he wanted and not giving a thought to concepts like Responsibility, Duty, Community Obligation, or the good old Work Ethic. Not that he was entirely sure he would have given a thought to them anyway. It just wasn't part of his personality. Having fun was. Relaxing. Taking it easy.

He'd spent the last years doing anything and everything to wipe out the evil aftereffects of the first part. All of the love of Lady Lynnette. And, yes, she would hate to hear him call her that. He had done it never quite believing that he would have his reward-that he would see the look in her eyes that he had just seen-but he had done it, anyway.

And now-give in? Give up? When he had just seen that look in her eyes? Never. Never.

He was drawing back in the 90s, on some not-in-English site or other with progression from early stuff that all looked like this:

With his skill growing until his art looked more like these:

-That last page though! So after seeing the kids get their powers two baddies say it’s “15%” and “it’s not enough” and “we’re behind schedule” and “We’re going to push—hard.” 15% of what, enough for what, behind what schedule, push how?!

First guess: only 15% of alien kids are showing powers and that’s not enough future super powered pawns to do the missions the government wants them for.

I feel like 15% should say something about how many aliens are in the town. 15% is not very many so there must be a lot of aliens if 15% of them is like, more than 3 people. 15% kind of makes more sense if there are no aliens in town, if instead the agents found some alien dna potion in the crashed ship and spiked the town’s water with it. Then it’d be 15% of thousands of people and the percentage would make more sense.

Also possible: Tia and Ben are only showing 15% of their full powers. That’s a weird way of saying it, these powers aren’t very percentageable. It’d be way more natural to say it like, “This isn’t their full abilities” or something. But this would make sense in terms of “15% of their powers is not enough for them to be able to fly the UFO like we want them to so we have to push them to get them to use their powers so they’ll develop and then they can fly the UFO.” That does make the “push” thing make sense...

The “schedule” could just be there’s a certain mission they need the kids to do, or the government demands the project show results by a certain time. It could also mean that an invasion of evil aliens is coming and the kids are being prepared to use their powers to fight it off.

I keep wondering if there will be a twist that Schoolcraft is herself an alien. Not sure how that would work out exactly it just seems like something the creators might pull just because they wanted a shocking twist.

-In the dream of the alien planet, Tia and Ben are chased by something unseen. Not just the stalagmites, that do move around and try to grab them but might just be terrain or animals. What is the unseen thing? The boss villain that destroyed the planet I guess maybe? I was not expecting to go potential intergalactic warlords here. Maybe it’s just a monster.

The whole alien planet dreams thing is weird. Magical dreams about a place hint that this is their true home, their destiny. But this alien planet is a scary destroyed place. So the message is “Man am I glad we’re not there anymore!”? It can’t be their true home because it’s not a safe place for them to live! And in the original Witch Mountain story their true home isn’t the planet they left, because that planet is gone, their true home is where their people are. And the Planet of the Two Suns was presumably a post-capitalist solarpunk utopia, because that was the world Alexander Key dreamed of even though those words weren’t invented during his lifetime.

It could also be a dream of the future, but Tia and Ben can see each other in the dream, which feels a lot more like they astrally traveled to the planet in realtime.

The whole thing is hard to make match up, just like the timeline...

-there’s a scene where Ben and Corey are googling “human puppeteering” to see if they can learn more about Ben’s power. They find a promising looking website that vanishes as they go to look at it. The agents deleted it so they wouldn’t see it.

This means 1)the agents knew this was a thing to watch out for, so it’s a known power the aliens can have not a one-off. And 2)someone out there also knows about this power and made a web site about it. The potential settlement of aliens? Though if they had a website you’d think the government could track them down, but maybe they’re in another country or something. Government can’t track down scammers in other countries so they wouldn’t be able to track down aliens there either I guess.

There seems to be plenty of puppeteering in fiction, there’s a whole tv tropes page. It's a villain power! But I’ve never heard of it in real life as a psychic power anyone thinks they have. Except... maybe as part of the “everyone is reading my mind” delusion that some very unfortunate people have? I can see that as possible. But it’s not like, a psychic power I’ve ever read about people training their minds to have like people try to learn telekinesis or mindreading. *deals out the zenner cards*

Happily my googling did not show up any kinky stuff, but I’m sure it’s out there...

But there is one example of real life pupeteering (kind of) in the first episode of White Rabbit Project Kari and Tori do a skit where they have electrodes stuck on their arms and connected together somehow so that every time Kari jerks her arm the electricity of the muscle movement zaps the same muscles in Tori’s arm so his arm makes the same movement. Then they go have a spaghetti dinner and Kari makes poor Tori spill stuff all over himself for a laugh. In the episode they called it mind control but it was just some amount of muscle control and only larger movements on larger muscles. But it is a little bit neat to have that in real life so I had to mention it!

-So this town. I’m assuming mostly ordinary people, a small number of aliens and alien kids, and a medium number of agents keeping an eye on them. That’s why the agents hide, they don’t want the ordinary humans to notice them either.

We have 4 agent hotspots: The garden center van, the bakery that doesn’t smell like baking, the auto repair shop that doesn’t repair cars, and the rich people who travel to ski but their skis aren’t used.

Because the garden center van was in the first minutes of the show I’m gonna guess it’s the most important thing the agents use. It seems to be Schoolcraft’s mobile spy base and she’s the main baddie. But is there a garden center or just the van? A plant nursery would be hard to keep up with since plants need care, unlike cars.

Hiding your secret base in an active business... so, a speakeasy? Do the agents have a password they have to say to get into the secret underground tunnels? Do all the agents know who else is an agent?

What are these spy businesses used for? I’m assuming they're all connected to the base under the mountain by passages and used to bring in supplies for the people experimenting on the UFO. The businesses are also places for the agents to have visible jobs without having to actually work, so they have free time to do sneaky spy stuff. And they’re a way that everyone from the secret base could come out and invade the town if they need to, they have doors all throughout the town.

The skiers. If they go skiing every weekend but aren’t really skiing, where are they? Are they down in the secret base? But presumably they drive away with skis on their car, that’s probably what Peter saw. So are they reporting in to Washington DC? Hunting for other alien settlements?

Tia’s is less weird, it’s useful for the plot that she can learn people’s secrets but also guaranteed to freak her out and make her look like she’s losing her marbles. And if you interpret it as “seeing people’s truth” it’s quite spiritual. It gives her the opportunity to know when others are in trouble and try to help them.

But Ben’s is extremely weird because puppeteering people is a villain power. I mean, it’s moving someone’s body without their consent which is evil. And giving a teenage boy that power, a real teenage boy would probably puppeteer a girl to flash her chest or something, just because teenage boy + experimenting with new superpower. Thankfully Ben seems not to be a creep but he does have a bit of anger impulsivity issues, he punches people who deserve it but still, punching people easily spills over to punching people who only kinda deserve it... this could go to bad places, I'm saying.

In the plot Ben’s power can be used to stop attackers, which is useful, and maybe force people to unlock a door or something. In the pilot his power seems to be just “move you hand like this” but if it expands to “push the right buttons to stop the countdown” that would be amazingly useful.

So I’m trying to think how these powers will be used in the plot, and I’m still working on that.

But I did have a flash of inspiration about what the powers could be for in-universe.

They’re for piloting the UFO.

The UFOs are alive, they’re made of the same stone-that-turns-into-goop of the stalagmites just set into the shape of a spaceship. Tia’s power is used to interface with the ship, by “seeing its truth” she uses can monitor the condition of the ship and use its sensors to detect everything around the ship. Ben’s power is for piloting, he puppeteers the ship. That’s why the humans in the underground base can’t make it go, the control system is a person. That’s also why Tia and Ben are a mystical pair born on the same day; it takes a pair to fly the ship. The fact that their powers work on humans too is an unintended side effect.

I gotta say, “you were born to be a living component of a UFO” is not Witch Mountainy. At all. But it’s such a freaking neat idea! It’s cool! It explains the weird choice of powers!

Or... the people of the alien planet evolved alongside these obsidian creatures. The creatures did not have higher thought but they did have the ability to reshape their bodies and just ignore gravity, and a set of senses that could analyze atoms or something. The humanoids evolved the ability to telepathically connect with the creatures, so they could share each other’s senses and thoughts. They worked together. The creatures were happy to take whatever shape their new friends needed, and science advanced quickly on the planet. The humanoids moved past their species adolescence and reached a stable society with no war or scarcity, all species having enough habitat, and the people and creatures did their work and had plenty of time to read books and garden and make art and invent stuff that was just for fun. Eventually someone looked up at the stars and began to think about exploring other planets just to see what was out there. The creatures could shape themselves into spaceships, they’d already been doing asteroid mining and poked around on the moon.

But then something bad happened on the planet, maybe a disease spread among the obsidian creatures that turned them violent and destructive. The aliens set out to find the cure, and it’s an element common on Earth. Only the ship crashed and now the alien planet is in a sad state with the survivors hiding underground with as many animals and plants as they can protect, while the maddened obsidian creatures destroy the surface. As soon as the cure is brought back, things can be set right but the rescue party is not stuck in a town being exploited by human greed.

How’s that work? I kinda like that.

I’m also... my whole theme of “this town is full of aliens living under oppression” is the best way I could think of to explain the facts that need explained, but I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s what the explanation would have been in the show. So I’m still letting my brain roam around sniffing for a better explanation. I wish this fandom was more than six people so other people could have theories lol. I posted the script on the facebook group and crickets! I’m having so much fun with this.

Extra thought about powers:

So there’s a very random scene where Tia walks out of school and sees the UFO in the sky. An undamaged version of the UFO that crashed. Then it turns out it’s just a helicopter-- I assume the camera cute to Tia gaping up at the sky and then she blinks and then we see the sky and it’s a helicopter. So no UFO, Tia was having a vision.

I think this is maybe part of her power, she sees people’s true selves appear and tell her their secrets, so this is a vision of the town’s secret. But if their dreams of the alien planet are dreams of the future, this could be a vision of the future. Either way, cool!

Can Tia see the astral spirits of animals?

What-all can Ben’s power do? He can puppeteer people but can he give more detailed commands like “take out the right key and unlock the door”? Because someone’s going to get locked up somewhere before the end of this story lol. Or will he upgrade to telekinesis of unliving objects?

Who else in town has powers? Logically there are probably other kids in the high school who just discovered their powers and are confused. Or there could be high school students who have joined the bad guys, happy to oppress their own people in exchange for a cushy life. An understandable if evil choice.

There have to be other adult aliens in town who are looking out for the kids and hoping to protect them from the agents.

And are there adult agents with powers? People who “graduated” from the town’s system for creating super powered spies and now use their powers to keep their fellow aliens in the fold. I expect the kids will encounter one of these when they succeed in sneaking into the secret base.

Which makes me wonder what the baddies’ whole plan is. What are all the steps the baddies take to get from a baby to a grown agent with special powers. They let the kids grow up normally so they come out mentally stable, they wait for a few of them to show powers because they don’t want to let non-powered ones in on the secret, then what? They have to turn these teens into dedicated agents, put them through some kind of navy seal training, and ensure their loyalty.

I wonder if Tia’s “New York University Summer Scholarship program” is actually recruiting, and Ben will win a scholarship too. Someone will take them aside and go, “You’ll be one of the elite, protecting the nation and its freedom, defeating terrorist plots and stuff. Don’t you want to help defeat terrorists? And you’ll also get to live in luxury except for not having your freedom. Oh, and the other choice is to live in a cell and get experimented on. So come do military training!”

And then everybody thinks Tia is in New York and the baddies send deepfake videos back to her friends so nobody worries about her. There could be other kids who this happened to, who never come home but they send plenty of emails and videos. Peter could investigate these people and discover there are a whole lot of them and it’s suspicious. Peter could look up people’s interests and realize that the video game nerd never mentions video games when he calls or something.

The other option is that after being accepted for this summer program it gets canceled because teens with powers are not allowed to leave the town, and that sudden cancellation sparks suspicion.

Back to the town, who else in the kids’ lives is an agent? I’m assuming lots of people, like Peter and Corey’s families, are ordinary people who just live in the town because it is a town, it needs an economy and people to run the plumbing and garbage trucks and stuff.

Probably Audrey has at least one friend who is just in her life to keep an eye on Tia. Once Tia starts to show powers this friend would react... how? Try to push the idea that Tia is becoming unwell and needs to be institutionalized or put on medications that are supposed to help but actually don’t? Try to push mother and daughter apart so Tia doesn’t have her mother’s support?

Tia and Ben share dreams, the two of them seem to be mystically a pair. Do all the aliens come in pairs? What happens to one member of a pair if the other one gets killed or hauled off to a cell to be experimented on?

Do the dreams of the alien planet evolve through the series? They must, because these dreams are how the kids learn more about what they really are. But what happens?

Do the stalagmites communicate? Are they even alive? They might just be terrain!

Do the kids see what the something in the clouds is? I’m guessing it’s a mothership but it could be a giant flying monster.

So far the alien planet is just a desolate landscape, lightning, and weird stalagmites, but as the kids wander through it will they find anything else? Ruined strictures? A lone survivor in a tattered cloak wandering the surface? An underground vault where the survivors who haven’t left the planet are hiding? I feel like there should be an obsidian tower because the planet kind of has a “black glass” theme but what the heck would be in the tower?

And maybe the devastation is only on part of the planet and if the kids wander far enough in their dreams they’ll find some kind of front line beyond which aliens are holding off the advancing destruction?

What’s in the base under the mountain? The UFO in a big vault, labs to analyze the bits cut off the UFO, diagrams of the UFO on the wall. Lots of surveillance cameras on screen showing different parts of the town. Files on everybody they’re watching.

Cells with alien captives being experimented on and brainwashed.

Barracks; people must live down there, though most of them probably live in the town. A garage for various vehicles that could chase our heroes around. 4-wheelers to get around on the mountain. Probably some drones. Corridors to run through.

Another possibility:

The migration has been going on for years. The aliens decided not to tell their children their true nature to avoid, y’know, getting kidnapped and exploited for their powers. Then the UFO crashed 30 years ago and the government agency discovered aliens were on earth. They tracked down the unknowing descendants of the first arrivals and invited them to this town to exploit for their powers.

This would explain Schoolcraft’s “15%”, only 15% of the descendants were showing special abilities. But the idea that the aliens would purposefully leave their children in ignorance and just erase their own culture is both unlikely behavior and no fun as a plot.

Powers

Tia’s power is to have visions in which people’s inner selves appear to her and tell her their true feelings. It seems to be activated when Tia notices a person and that person is close enough that she can see them. But it doesn’t always happen, it doesn’t activate when she’s talking with her mom or with Peter. But it’s pretty freaky! Visions of people appear all in her personal space and she naturally goes “yikes!” and freaks out because what the heck. She’s also anxious because she is having hallucinations, and for someone concerned about her mental health that’s really scary.

I assume as the series goes on she’ll be able to control when it activates so it stops jumpscaring her. Then this power will be a great tool for gathering information. ...probably. Because the visions seem to be of people talking about their feelings, not spilling lots of facts. I think Tia will have visions of her school counselor saying things like, “What they’re doing to these kids, it’s not right. But we have to do it...” and Tia will have learned that her counselor is up to something but she’ll have to use spying to find out the details.

At the end of the pilot Tia is in a car with a jerk who’s driving crazy, because she was freaking out and chose the wrong guy to give her a ride. She sends her own inner self out of her body to yell at him to stop the car because just yelling it the normal way isn’t working. So... I guess she has the power to jumpscare people, which is useful. Can she also command people? Did the guy hit the brakes because he was compelled to obey or just because he was going yikes? Can she send her ghost out farther than right next to her body? Can she do astral projection and see things in places that she can’t physically get to?

Tia also has a vision of a spaceship overhead. It seems like she hears a sound, looks up, sees the spaceship then—it’s a helicopter. But it’s the real spaceship, the same as the one that crashed except not busted up from crashing.

Her father’s illness is described as dreams about unlikely things like the doors of the house being locked so they can’t get out. A sensible nightmare for a guy who’s, y’know, trapped in a town under the thumb of government agents! Audrey didn’t mention him talking about being watched, which is both a common delusion and something that was actually happening in the town. Maybe the writers thought it would be too on the nose.

And Tia and Ben have a connection. When Tia is in danger Ben is able to see through her eyes and is able to find her and help rescue her. And they’re born on the same day. This so reads to me at them being twins in the Purple sense sense not the literal sense. I want this to be a sibling connection, because Witch Mountain is a sibling story. They’re siblings in every Witch Mountain story so they need to be siblings in this one and mystical-not-literal siblings is just fine!

I... wonder if I could ask the writers how much of the franchise they consumed. I’m here seeing references to Purple and maybe they never even watched Purple! I should see if I can email them, it’s not impossible they’d tell me stuff. But they also might come for whoever leaked the script so maybe I’ll wait a bit and make sure it’s spread around. Sorry Disney, you aren’t allowed to lock the barn door until all the horses have well and truly escaped!

The two of them also astral project to the alien planet in their dreams. They had the same dream, they could talk to each other in their dream and even touch each other. They seem to be able to interact with stuff on the planet since they get grabbed by a stalagmite so their astral bodies can physically interact with stuff.

Ben’s power is puppeteering people. At first he does it by accident, then he does it on purpose as an experiment. Then at the end of the pilot he stops a truck that’s barreling towards Tia by puppeteering the driver to hit the brakes.

The UFO

The book describes the “lifeboat” as a silvery flying saucer, and the fact that it’s called a lifeboat suggests a mothership that’s probably still up there so that’s cool. In the movies we see generic flying saucers.

The script describes the ship in the underground base as “angular, glassy” and that it’s “made of glassy material that swallows the light” like the rocks on the alien planet. So, black rather than silver? And isn’t that from Game of Thrones? “Oily black stone that swallows the light”? I’m getting an ominous vibe about this UFO!

If the UFO is black and ominous... and we don’t know if it is, because we don’t have pictures unless someone leaks some... does that signal the aliens may not be benign? The whole plot could be leaning the opposite way from my theorizing! The humans are certainly being very shady doing surveillance on this town but maybe the aliens came to invade and then interbred with humans and Tia and Ben get powers from their alien heritage and humanity and kindness from their human heritage!

I’m not going to bother with that line of thought much, because that does not suit a Witch Mountain story.

But jumping back, if the UFO is made from the stone of the nightmare planet that means that is the planet the UFO came from so the planet Tia and Ben or at least their ancestors came from. So the planet was much nicer before it got invaded by stalagmite monsters, I guess? And it can’t be returned to unless the monsters are defeated? Or something.

Relationships

I also wanted to ramble a bit about the shipping.

Tia has a boyfriend, Jace. He is very obviously the mundane human boyfriend who the mystical girl will have to leave behind as she embraces her mystical destiny. He likes his overachiever beautiful girlfriend, and we learn from his inner self that he’d like to take their relationship physical. Which... nothing wrong with wanting to take things to the next level but the way his ghost says it is just the trope of a guy who’s going to be pressurey.

Tia also has Peter, her childhood friend who loves her so much it hurts but she doesn’t notice. He’s coded to be the kid who doesn’t get the girl. Peter has a blog that tracks strange things in the town of Witch Mountain so he’s been investigating the mysteries that our heroes need to figure out for a while. But do the government agents know about his blog? Are they tracking everything he knows? Probably.

And Tia has a supernatural connection with Ben. I think this should be a sibling-ish connection, because Witch Mountainishness, but the script clearly wants their mystical sparks to be the sparks of romance too.

Ben’s best friend is Corey, who is a she in the script but is played by B Norwood who is nonbinary so I think after the script was written the character was changed to be nonbinary. Which is cool. In the script I read Corey as Ben’s best friend, they suggest going to the internet to investigate Ben’s strange powers. So Corey is Ben’s human investigation partner like Peter is Tia’s. I think the four of them will become the show’s Scooby team—they just need Winkie the cat!

Like in Mystery Incorporated, it’s always four people and an animal!

Tony and Tia’s people came escaping the natural destruction of their planet. They were living in their own towns but integrating into human society, and perhaps in the future they would have revealed their presence in order to help the people of their adopted planet.

Danny and Anna’s people come to Earth just to have fun but sometimes get sidetracked and lose their way. In fact the purple guy hints that everybody on Earth now is descended from people from the other dimension who lost their ability to connect with each other and make the light and forgot where they came from.

But Seth and Sara’s people are a little less utopian. Their people destroyed the environment on their world and the military wants to move to Earth by conquest and wipe out the locals. But Seth and Sara’s parents are scientists and they invented... basically a GECK, a gizmo that will bring their planet back to life. The GECK is on Earth for testing and the kids have to find it and take it back to prove to their people that the peaceful option exists.

And in the series the kids have dreams of a destroyed planet with creepy stalagmite things with needle appendages that move by turning to liquid and try to engulf them, and hints of worse monstrous creatures both on the ground and in the sky.

What planet is this? Is this the planet the kids’ people come from? And what happened to it?

My first guess is the stalagmites are monsters, some kind of “they swarm across the universe, devouring all life from every planet they visit” thing like in Warhammer. Since the script suggests other creatures, maybe there are masterminds herding the stalagmites or using them for something. Maybe what’s in the clouds are the motherships that transport the stalagmites.

It could be that the stalagmites have taken over the aliens’ home planet and that’s what Tia and Ben are seeing. But if that’s true, where are the rest of the people who lived there? All dead? All moved to other planets? Are there other alien communities on Earth that the government’s secret agents haven’t discovered? Maybe in other countries? The answer to this question could give us the ending to the story and it is the right ending: Tia and Ben escape the town to find their people.

It’s also possible that their people found a different planet to move to. In Zenna Henderson’s stories of The People they find a new planet to move to but some still choose to stay on Earth. It could be that the UFO that crashed on Earth was headed to this new planet but went off course and at the end of the story Tia and Ben with their friends will head to the stars.

The other possibility is that Tia and Ben are seeing a future threat. The stalagmites are coming for their home planet, then for Earth. The aliens came to Earth to warn the humans, or maybe Earth has a mineral that’s toxic to the stalagmites or some human tech could fight them, or something. But the ship crashed and they were captured. Tia and Ben have to find the anti-stalagmite macguffin and signal their people to send another UFO to take it and use it to get rid of the threat.

Or it could be that Tia and Ben and the stalagmites are the same kind of creature-- shapeshifters that turn into whatever will survive on the planets they visit. On earth, they’re humans. On the desolate planet, they’re stalagmites. They have their own chameleon circuit, hah. The stalagmites in their dream are trying to engulf them in order to communicate, not devour. This theory probably isn’t right, it’d be pretty weird.

I feel like it’s an important part of a Witch Mountain story that the home planet isn’t a place that they can go back to—but Danny and Anna do, and so do Seth and Sara, so I should consider it a possibility. And returning to the home planet is a good ending for the story.

Any of these theories could be true, and I’m not sure the endgame was ever decided for the series. With the way things get canceled halfway through these days the creators of the show wouldn’t have confidence they would ever get to film the ending to the story. So we can just choose our favorite!

I think I like the idea that the aliens came to earth to get something to fight off the stalagmites. I’ll say it’s quartz. Quartz is a suitably mystical substance, common, and it’s the element the Pirate Planet was after in the Doctor Who story of the same name so that’s cool. The aliens came to get some quartz and their ship crashed, leaving them stuck in the town being oppressed by a secret government agency who believe they can just fight the stalagmites with nukes if they ever arrive.

Tia and Ben figure out their powers and slowly find out what’s going on with their town. In the finale of season one they find the tunnel into the mountain and see the UFO and find their missing parents. The parents have been test subjects for experimentation for some years and are rather the worse for wear so they need the kids to travel somewhere to find and activate the communications thingy in the UFO and tell their people what’s been happening and to come and get... the mountain! Maybe I should make the macguffin the element granite, they can just beam up the whole mountain and turn it into whatever they need to poison the stalagmites and stop their advance of destruction. That’d be cool. Then Tia and Ben and their friends and family go back to help rebuild their home planet which was attacked but not wiped out.